Post on 28-Apr-2023
Intellectual Labor and the Capitalist
Production of Nature
Forest Fires, Documents, and Socioecological
Fixes by Experts in Indonesia
Umar Al Faruq
Institute of Sociology and Human Geography
UNIVERSITY OF OSLO
2019
Intellectual Labor and the Capitalist
Production of Nature: Forest Fires,
Documents, and Socioecological Fixes by
Experts in Indonesia
© Umar Al Faruq
2019
Intellectual Labor and the Capitalist Production of Nature: Forest Fires, Documents, and
Socioecological Fixes by Experts in Indonesia
Umar Al Faruq
http://www.duo.uio.no/
Press: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo
I
Abstract
An exploration of how intellectual labor produce nature and the relationship between them
has been argued for. Using the case of Indonesian forest fires in light of recent climate change
policy developments such as the Paris Agreement and the establishment of Indonesia’s Peat
Restoration Agency, this thesis attempts to answer the following research question: How do
the laboring acts of experts, through documents, produce nature in practice? The production
of nature thesis is an approach that posits the metabolic relationship between society and
nature. Derived from Marx’s views on nature, the production of nature assumes that humans
enter into relationships with nature through acts of labor, such as farming or mining. The
production of nature by intellectual labor, it is argued, is mediated through documents. One
form of the production of nature is the socioecological fix, an extension of Harvey’s (2001)
spatial fix, where fixed capital is deployed in order to avoid or defer crises, which in this case
are those of a socioecological nature i.e. forest fires. Since the fix is a form of produced
nature, it is therefore also metabolic; they carry with them certain ideologies and hegemonic
properties. The deployment of socioecological fixes through intellectual labor, in this context,
is mediated through these policy documents: Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan 2016-
2020; Grand Design for Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires 2017-2019;
Nationally Determined Contribution; and ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze
Pollution. The documents were analyzed with practice-oriented document analysis as used by
Asdal (2015) in order to identify certain issues that the documents have created. Semi-
structured interviews were also conducted with relevant participants to fill in informational
gaps. The results demonstrate that the documents transformed the issue of forest fires into the
issue of emission targets, technocratic superiority, and lack of indigenous involvement.
This means that the laser focus on emission targets ushers in technocratic policies and
managerialism that omit the involvement of indigenous groups, instead of a rights-based
approach that strengthens indigenous institutions.
III
Acknowledgements
As I write this so close to the deadline, I feel anxious and unsure of what to fill in this empty
part of my thesis. First and foremost, I would like give my absolute gratitude to my supervisor
Karen O’Brien for keeping me in check despite her busy schedule and guide me through my
bumpy academic ride. I may not be the best student, but at least I finished a thesis.
Perfectionism has always been a crutch in my life. I also would like to thank Hilde Reinertsen
for allowing me attend her lecture and further guide me on important questions that allowed
me to push my thesis further, our discussions have been instrumental. For my informants, you
may or may not come upon this thesis, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to collect
the necessary data for my research. I would like to thank my good friends at SAIH Blindern
who indirectly influenced the approach I used for my thesis and provided the necessary
intellectual exercise your work involves. You formed a significant part of my life in Norway.
To my fellow Indonesian students, thank you for struggling together in this foreign land.
For my family, I thank my parents for their unwavering support, both emotionally and
financially. Without them I would never be this far in life, nothing I ever do can repay their
struggle and love for me. To my brothers, thank you for being reliable, thank you for being
there.
The wretched of the earth, this is for you.
For God, I offer this seeking of knowledge as my worship.
I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find
yourself. Your own reality—for yourself not for others—what no other man can ever
know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
Charles Marlow, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
V
Table of Contents
Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... I
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. III
Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... V
List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... VIII
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ IX
List of terms and acronyms ....................................................................................................... X
1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 Research question ........................................................................................................ 4
1.2 The production of nature and (intellectual) labor ........................................................ 5
1.3 Thesis structure .......................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
2 The Indonesian Context ..................................................................................................... 9
2.1 Political structure of environmental governance ......................................................... 9
2.1.1 Background of Indonesia as a nation-state ........................................................... 9
2.1.2 Environmental governance ................................................................................. 12
2.1.3 Indigenous movements ....................................................................................... 13
2.2 From forestry to oil palm dominance ........................................................................ 14
2.3 Forest fires ................................................................................................................. 19
2.3.1 A brief history .................................................................................................... 19
2.3.2 Patronage and the ASEAN context .................................................................... 22
3 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................... 26
3.1 The production and notions of nature ........................................................................ 26
3.1.1 Nature and society .............................................................................................. 26
3.1.2 The production of nature .................................................................................... 29
3.1.3 The socioecological fix as produced nature ....................................................... 33
3.1.4 Intellectual labor in the production of nature ..................................................... 41
3.2 Intellectual laborers and experts ................................................................................ 44
3.2.1 Defining experts and intellectual labor .............................................................. 44
3.3 The transformative role of documents ....................................................................... 48
3.3.1 Documents in the development sector ............................................................... 48
3.3.2 “Modifying work,” or the labor of modification ................................................ 50
4 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 55
VI
4.1 Assumptions and theoretical implications ................................................................. 55
4.1.1 Positionality and bias ......................................................................................... 55
4.1.2 Key assumptions ................................................................................................ 55
4.2 Data collection and fieldwork.................................................................................... 56
4.2.1 Semi-structured Interviews ................................................................................ 56
4.2.2 Acquiring documents ......................................................................................... 58
4.3 Practice-oriented document analysis ......................................................................... 58
4.4 Shortcomings and ethical considerations .................................................................. 62
5 Document analysis ........................................................................................................... 64
5.1 Documents as text ...................................................................................................... 64
5.1.1 Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan as text ................................................. 64
5.1.2 Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires as text . 65
5.1.3 Nationally Determined Contribution as text ...................................................... 67
5.1.4 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution as text ......................... 69
5.1.5 Summary ............................................................................................................ 70
5.2 Documents as process ................................................................................................ 71
5.2.1 Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan as process ........................................... 71
5.2.2 Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires as process
72
5.2.3 Nationally Determined Contribution as process ................................................ 74
5.2.4 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution as process ................... 76
5.2.5 Summary ............................................................................................................ 79
5.3 Documents as context ................................................................................................ 80
5.3.1 Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan as context ............................................ 80
5.3.2 Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires as context
81
5.3.3 Nationally Determined Contribution as context ................................................. 83
5.3.4 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution as context .................... 84
5.3.5 Summary ............................................................................................................ 85
6 Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 87
6.1 Expert documents and producing nature ................................................................... 87
6.2 Issues, transformed .................................................................................................... 88
6.3 Motivations and rationale behind issue formations ................................................... 89
VII
6.4 Intellectual labor in the production of nature ............................................................ 90
7 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 92
References ................................................................................................................................ 94
Appendix .................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
VIII
List of Figures
Figure 1 Administrative map of Indonesia: provinces ............................................................... 9
Figure 2. El Nino precipitation impact (Met Office, n.d.b) ..................................................... 19
Figure 3. Haze crisis of 2015 (National Environment Agency Singapore in McKirdy, 2015) 23
Figure 4. David Harvey's circuits of capital (Aoyama, Murphy, & Hanson, 2011) ................ 34
Figure 5. Base and superstructure (Wikipedia, retrieved 2019) ............................................... 43
Figure 6. The PRA website with the downloadable second edition of the document with a
thumbnail of the first edition (BRG Indonesia, n.d.) ............................................................... 61
IX
List of Tables
Table 1. List of interviewees .................................................................................................... 57
Table 2. Dimensions of practice-oriented document analysis (Institutt Sosiologi og
Samfunnsgeografi, 2019) ......................................................................................................... 59
Table 3. Modified tools for practice-oriented document analysis ............................................ 60
X
List of terms and acronyms
AFOLU Agriculture, Forestry, and Land Use
AMAN Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the
Archipelago)
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
ATHP ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution
BAU Business-as-usual
BRG Badan Restorasi Gambut (Peat Restoration Agency)
CIFOR Center for International Forest Research
CMfEA Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs
CMfHDC Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and Culture
CMfPLSA Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs
GD Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Land, and Plantation Fires 2017-
2019
GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (German
Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH)
GoI Government of Indonesia
IPB Insitut Pertanian Bogor (Bogor Insitute of Agriculture)
INDC Intentional Nationally Determined Contribution
LULUCF Land-Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry
MoEF Ministry of Environment and Forestry (Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup dan
Kehutanan)
NDC Nationally Determined Contribution
NDMA National Disaster Management Agency (Badan Nasional Penanggulangan
Bencana)
NDPA National Development Planning Agency (Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan
Nasional)
NGO Non-governmental organization
XI
RDMA Regional Disaster Management Agency (Badan Penanggulangan Bencana
Daerah)
SP Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan 2016-2020
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change
1
1 Introduction
Climate and global environmental change have become the great issue of the day. Climate
change has altered the way we think about the world and our way of life, challenging the way
we organize society at all levels (Maslin, 2014). The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate
Change (IPCC) has, since its establishment in 1988, published reports about the continuing
warming of the globe and progress of climate change. Their latest 2018 Special Report
presented the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, in which
increases will be seen in global average temperature, high temperature extremes in most
inhabited regions, heavy precipitation in some regions, and the probability of drought and
lack of precipitation in some regions (IPCC, 2018). The urgency of this special report and the
five Assessment Reports published before it is abundantly clear: nations of the world need to
do something, and that something should resemble the recommendation points of the reports.
Growing concerns about the alarmist and apocalyptic views of the IPCC, and subsequently
adoption by the United Nations (UN) and its member states, have been growing and ask for a
more transformative, open-ended, and democratic human-focused climate policies (Bassett &
Fogelman, 2013; Liverman, 2009; O’Brien, 2011; Pelling, Mark, David Manuel-Navarrete,
2011; Rickards, Ison, Fünfgeld, & Wiseman, 2014; Swyngedouw, 2010; among others).
While impacts of climate change are real and need to be dealt with, it has been argued that the
way in which countries adjust their policies should not be at the expense of already vulnerable
people, both in the short- and long-term (Klinsky et al., 2017). Countries in the Global South
are disproportionately impacted by climate change effects such as extreme weather events and
sea-level rise, as they try to match economic growth with “developed” countries of the Global
North. For example, Indonesia’s capital Jakarta is sinking, partly due to over-extraction of
groundwater and property development in the northern part of the city. This became one of
the reasons the Government of Indonesia (GoI) is moving the capital to East Kalimantan
which ironically also suffers from climate- and growth-related disasters i.e. forest fires
(Lyons, 2019), that stems from the palm oil and pulpwood industries, a predicament shared by
other provinces in Kalimantan.
In 2015 during the 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) of the United Nations Framework
Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change was
negotiated and as of 2019 was signed by 195 countries while 186 have become party to it
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(UNTC, n.d.). The agreement requires countries to set nationally determined contributions
(NDCs) that work toward the fulfillment of the agreement’s objectives: limit temperature
increase to 2°C and ideally 1.5°C, increase adaptation and resilience capacities and promote
low-emission development, and make finance flows in line with climate-resilient
development and low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (UNFCCC, 2015).
During the same year, several months prior to COP 21, Indonesia suffered a forest fire and
haze crisis. Forest fires have been occurring in a number of regions annually but only a few of
them have caused haze that is transboundary in nature. It was estimated that the fire crisis of
2015 emitted 1.75 billion metric tonnes carbon dioxide equivalents (MtCO2e) (GFED, 2015),
taking up the bulk of the Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) sector-based
total emissions and over a quarter of the world’s LULUCF’s emissions in 2016 (Climate
Action Tracker, n.d.). Most of these fires took place in peatland, natural carbon sinks that
stores abundant CO2 – more than any type of vegetation (International Union for
Conservation of Nature, n.d.). These stores of CO2 are released when burned, thus causing the
emissions spikes seen at the time. The peatlands of Indonesia are naturally wet but have been
dry due to either drought or draining activities associated with land use change.
The issue of forest fires in Indonesia, particularly annual ones taking place in the islands of
Kalimantan and Sumatra, have been a topic of much study and research over the past two
decades due to the massive 1997-98 forest fires and recently the 2015 haze crisis. The topic
spurred inquiries attracting scientists and international organizations into different aspects
surrounding the issue, from the direct and indirect causes of the fires (Dennis et al., 2005;
Stolle & Lambin, 2003; Sze, Lee, & Lee, 2019), indigenous rights/movements regarding
forest stewardship (Alcorn, Bamba, Masiun, Natalia, & Royo, 2003), state and civil society
forest management (Wrangham, 2002), spatial analyses (Boehm & Siegert, 2001; Dennis et
al., 2005; Fuller, Jessup, & Salim, 2004; Page et al., 2002), the palm oil and forestry industry
(Austin et al., 2017; Li, 2018; Prabowo, Maryudi, Senawi, & Imron, 2017; Pye, 2019; Susanti
& Maryudi, 2016), to regional perspectives of transboundary haze and fires (Cotton, 1999;
Mayer, 2006; Tan, 2005; Tay, 1998; Varkkey, 2013, 2016a, 2016b).
There are and have been debates surrounding who or what is behind the burning of peatlands;
individual farmers and indigenous communities have been blamed many times by the
government and timber and palm oil companies of carelessly using fire to clear land for
agriculture but this has been contested by indigenous and pro-environmental groups due to the
3
complexity and scale of shifting cultivation (Endi, 2018; Pahlevi, Jong, & Zamzami, 2018;
Rønning, 2018). Many academics are also in agreement regarding private companies’
culpability (Fox, 2000; Gellert, 1998; Wijedasa et al., 2017); the clandestine nature of doing
business in the palm oil sector have been well documented by Varkkey (2013, 2016a) who
describes the strong patronage networks that exist at different scales of the industry and
argues that these networks drive the persistence of transboundary haze caused by forest fires.
Indeed, palm oil production and the burning of peatland share an obvious link.
To my knowledge, little research has been done on forest fires in Indonesia from a critical
geography standpoint, particularly from a Marxist perspective. This is a critical gap
considering the intensity of capitalist and neoliberal forces surrounding forest fires and the
region in general (Springer, 2017). Here I turn to Neil Smith (2008) and his ‘production of
nature’ thesis in which he theorized the metabolic relationship between nature and society and
attempted to dissolve the apparent barrier between the two ontologies, arguing that nature
(whose definition will be explicit later) is historically produced through human labor and
takes a specific form under capitalism. Following this, the issue of labor that produces nature
requires investigating; Ekers and Loftus (2013) argue that, as labor is easily abstracted and
assumed to be embodied in factory and construction workers, farmers etc., space should be
made to explore concrete and alternative forms of labor. Such forms are present in the (social
and ecological) forces that caused and managed forest fires and the rehabilitation that takes
place after them. Loftus (2017) points to “mental…laboring practices” as one such form and
indeed this leads to an interesting query into the intellectual labor done by individuals in
Indonesian environmental governance.
State actors have shared the brunt of undertaking mitigation and recovery efforts after forest
fires. More recently the Indonesian government has made great progress in reducing the
frequency of annual fires due to the establishment of the non-structural Peat Restoration
Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut, BRG) in 2016 and a comprehensive plan in fire
prevention issued by the ministry-level National Development Planning Agency (Badan
Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional, BAPPENAS). By extension, these efforts are in line
with targets in the regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Transboundary
Haze Agreement, which Indonesia ratified in 2015, and the Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDC) submitted to the UNFCCC during COP 21.
4
1.1 Research question
The laboring of the expert in the production of nature provides a useful avenue of
investigation that allows for better understanding the relationship between humans and nature
in a time of global environmental change. This study will explore the limits of the production
of nature thesis; by looking at how intellectual labor, as opposed to manual labor, position
itself in the capitalist production of nature. Thus, the research question this thesis will attempt
to answer is
How do the laboring acts of experts, through documents, produce nature in practice?
Recognizing that this is an ambitious task, I will focus on investigating this process in the
context of Indonesian forest fires in light of changing attitudes towards economic
development, wildfires, and climate change over the past few decades. Forest fires occur
annually in Kalimantan and Sumatra but in 2015 it reached new levels and attracted
significant international attention along with the burning of peat in peatlands that emit vast
amounts of CO2 becoming a central part of mitigation policies. The crisis brought to the fore,
once again, issues of deforestation, haze, greenhouse gas emissions, palm oil, and indigenous
rights – at heart issues pertaining to nature-society relationships. Meanwhile the 2015 Paris
Agreement on Climate Change would be drafted in COP 21 mere months after the disaster. It
is under this context that the research question should be understood.
Indeed, the words in a document influence and determine how the problem is framed, what
kinds of policies are issued, and how they are implemented (Asdal, 2015). At the same time,
the authors of these documents, as well as other contributors (in some cases, especially other
contributors), choose those words, imbued with certain meanings and intentions in a precise
manner. But behind the wordcraft of documents exist a certain logic of the subject at hand—
for instance, a minister may or may not have the same idea about sustainability compared to a
farmer. Consequently, three sub-questions emerge:
1) What role do expert documents play in producing forest social natures in Indonesia?
2) How was the issue of forest fires formed and how was it transformed in expert
documents?
3) What is the rationale expressed by the experts who produce such documents?
5
To answer these sub-questions, I will analyze four documents together with transcriptions of
interviews with government officials related to the issues raised in the documents. These
documents are:
1. Rencana Strategis Badan Restorasi Gambut 2016-2020 (Peat Restoration Agency
Strategic Plan 2016-2020). This is a strategic plan devised by the Peat Restoration
Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut, BRG) to restore burned peat in peatland areas but
also includes social programs in maintaining the restored peatland.
2. Grand Design Pencegahan Kebakaran Hutan, Kebun dan Lahan 2017-2019 (Grand
Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires 2017-2019). A short-
term plan produced by the national government through the National Development
Planning Agency to increase prevention efforts in reducing forest fires.
3. Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution. Indonesia’s commitment to
reduce GHG emissions unconditionally by 29% of the business-as-usual trajectory by
2020 and conditionally by 41% by 2030, in accordance to the Paris Agreement on
Climate Change.
4. The ASEAN Transboundary Haze Agreement. A regional agreement between
Southeast Asian countries to assist each other in reducing the occurrence of annual
transboundary haze of which Indonesia has largely been the source.
For brevity I will use the acronyms SP for the Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan 2016-
2020; GD for the Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires 2017-
2019; NDC for the Nationally Determined Contribution; and ATHP for the ASEAN
Transboundary Haze Agreement.
I have chosen to use the words expert and intellectual interchangeably. Although there are
obviously differences between these two terms, they have one thing in common: they possess
intellectual labor that they use or sell within the policymaking infrastructure. Thus, for all
intents and purposes, these two terms are synonymous.
1.2 The production of nature and (intellectual) labor
Historically traditional manual labor dominated the discussion surrounding production of
nature. In this thesis I will build a case based on the production of nature and alternative
forms of labor and explore how such kinds of labor are able to influence to a large degree the
6
production of nature. However, a primer on the production of nature is perhaps needed, for
readers who are unfamiliar with the production of nature thesis, which the chapter on theory
will examine further in greater detail.
The concept of the production of nature is well known in Marxist geography literature. It
was first proposed by Neil Smith in Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the
Production of Space (1984) in which Smith argues that nature, as well as space, is produced
by way of human activity and, recently, capitalism. Smith developed a theory of uneven
development, which was done through a meticulous process of defining nature and its
production within contemporary capitalist society. He posited that, as far as modern capitalist
society is concerned, all nature accessible by humans is and has been produced through a
laboring process in order to generate profit and follow the logic of capital. Indeed, the
picturesque scene of a field of rapeseed we see today is a commodity of the agricultural sector
to be sold for a specific margin. Should we no longer have a need for rapeseed oil, tulips
might occupy its place, or maize, wheat, rice, or some other food crop.
Humans and nature have a metabolic relationship in which humans produce first nature and
second nature and, in turn, that production process influence our ideas and representations of
nature. For Smith, first nature can be defined as the material environment that exists as a
result of human labor (within capitalism or otherwise); whereas second nature is a specific
commodified nature, produced under capitalism, defined through its exchange value (as
opposed to its use value) and is regarded as fungible or interchangeable. The production of
first nature is partly determined by second nature because in this way nature is idealized
through the logic of capitalism of second nature which then informs the overall production of
material nature i.e. first nature. The reason why this is partly true is because biophysical
properties (or use values) of nature also play a part in their own commodification (being
defined through exchange values); for example, how wood from trees can be made into pulp
and paper to be sold on the market.
One form of the production of nature is through the socioecological fix, a concept developed
by Michael Ekers and Scott Prudham (2017, 2018). Built from David Harvey’s conception of
the spatial fix (2001), the socioecological fix is an extension to it which includes broader
socioecological processes. Like the spatial fix, the socioecological fix is an attempt to manage
capitalist crises of overaccumulation by deploying fixed capital, i.e. invest in physical
“infrastructure,” into the landscape. Additionally, although spatial fixes do have
7
socioecological dimensions to them and thus result in the production of nature more
generally, socioecological fixes look beyond (urban) economic processes to involve broader
socioenvironmental transformations wherever they may be. A simple example of this is the
construction of a hydroelectric dam built outside of the city, the water and electricity of which
provide the needs of mainly city dwellers but at the same time the lives of villagers living in
close proximity to the dam, as well as its immediate environment, are transformed. No longer
can the villagers access water the way they were used to, but perhaps they are now provided
employment at the dam facility. Consequently, life for both villagers and city dwellers and
their environments, i.e. their socionatures, are transformed by the dam’s existence.
Central to Smith’s thesis is that work or labor transforms nature to serve human needs. A
stereotypical image, perhaps, comes to mind of a farmer tending to her plot, cutting down
wild grass to plant crops for her family or to sell them in the market. Or construction of a
planned city from the ground up where it was previously ‘empty’ space. These kinds of
manual labor are clear in their influence in transforming the landscape and production of new
natures. Smith did not delve too much in discussing labor in general within the production of
nature since his objective was to develop a theory of uneven development – his use of labor
was mostly mediated by an abstract conception of labor.
Ekers and Loftus (2013) revitalized – to borrow their term – the production of nature thesis by
infusing a Gramscian perspective into it. They argued, echoing Gramsci, for more focus on
concrete labor, in the absolute historicist sense i.e. in relation to contingent social, economic,
and political conditions. Labor existed in different forms throughout history with different
social relations and different relations to production. As well as that, they compiled arguments
for investigations of “diverse types of laboring” (Ekers & Loftus, 2013) in which, among
others, Smith (2008) himself expanded from Uneven Development where he implicitly points
to technical and gendered divisions of labor. Similarly, Loftus (2017) argued that while Smith
briefly discussed on intellectual and manual labor based on the work of Alfred Sohn Rethel
(1978), little has been put forward toward investigations on other kinds of laboring in late
capitalist societies with regards to the production of nature. Following this, an exploration of
intellectual labor’s role in the production of nature is called for, particularly that which is
done by so-called experts in public policy and environmental governance.
Defining who experts exactly are is the task of the following chapter, but here I will establish
a preliminary connection between documents and the capitalist production of nature. If we
8
consider experts as laborers, it is then quite straightforward how they use documents to
channel their knowledge and conceptions of a certain issue (or nature or space) into
documents and provide a vision for how such an issue should be appropriated to match an
arbitrary measurement of progress (usually economic). For example, the United Nations (UN)
and its organizations provide guidelines on limiting deforestation and promoting
afforestation/reforestation in areas traditionally designated for forests. Such an example
demonstrates a seemingly “neutral” process of producing nature, but a closer look reveals that
such programs accompany capitalist forces such as carbon trading (Newell & Paterson, 2010,
pp. 9, 136), in which developed countries provide assistance to developing countries with
abundant forest areas in order to continue their own production processes, now acceptable
under international environmental regulations (which themselves are products of a different
group of experts). In short, intellectual labor, through documents, produce nature differently.
Kristin Asdal (2015) provides an important insight to how this is done from the field of
Science and Technology Studies. In what she calls ‘modifying work’, she conducted a
practice-oriented study on how paperwork, particularly expert documents, are written and
modified to have a certain issue or narrative resulting in the appraised problem becoming a
task for only a certain group of people while excluding others. In her case of an expert
document to address pollution in Norway in the 1950s, she traced how the issue of industrial
pollution that was felt by real people local to the factories that produced the pollutants was
eventually transformed into a problem only experts of industries and the nation can handle
and a problem inherent, even necessary, to an industrializing nation. The answer to the
problem eventually was how factories can still operate without having significant negative
externalities in the future under new a national legal framework more so than to pay the same
level or more attention to the local people affected by the pollution. In the discussed report,
“industry is given a privileged position” (Asdal, 2015); a certain politics of scale was crafted
from and resulting in modifications of such a document.
9
2 The Indonesian Context
The production of nature needs to be understood in terms of its local context, as people have
different relationships with nature in different geographical locations and cultural contexts.
The context of Indonesia’s forest fires is one with intricate, often confusing, political
structures and lawmaking logics, heavily influenced by regional and international forces,
overlapping regulations, and marred by information asymmetry and corruption. The aim of
this chapter is not be exhaustive but to elucidate the problem toward a working point of
departure for a clearer foundation of this thesis.
2.1 Political structure of environmental governance
2.1.1 Background of Indonesia as a nation-state
Figure 1 Administrative map of Indonesia: provinces
Source: CartoGIS Services, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National
University
Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of over seventeen thousand islands with seven notable
regions or cluster of islands: Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Lesser Sunda Islands that
include Bali and West and East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku Islands, and New Guinea that
includes Papua and West Papua. As the fourth largest country in the word in terms of
10
population with a projected population of 270 million people in 2019, most of the population
reside within these seven regions. The island of Java is the most populated and there have
been historical attempts to increase the population in the “Outer Islands” which proved
somewhat successful, at least quantitatively. While vegetation and agriculture in islands such
as Java and Bali are dominated by rice paddies, dense tropical rainforests mostly grow in
Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua (i.e. the provinces of West Papua and Papua). Particularly in
Sumatra and Kalimantan, forest-based agriculture has been a major source of national income
with prominent pulpwood/timber and palm oil companies operating plantations raking in
international investments and becoming major exporters.
Indonesia is a republic, headed by a president who tends to matters related to the executive
branch, with the national and local People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan
Rakyat, DPR) – also called Parliament – and Regional Representative Council (Dewan
Perwakilan Daerah, DPD) forming the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Perwakilan
Rakyat, MPR) as the highest body of the legislative. The judiciary, meanwhile, consists of the
Supreme Court (Mahkamah Agung, MA) and a Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi,
MK).
Indonesia has four kinds of administrative units with the village (desa/kelurahan) as the
smallest one; several villages make up a sub-district (kecamatan); and a number of sub-
districts form a district (kabupaten) which is at the same level as a city (kota); while a districts
ultimately make up the province (provinsi), the largest administrative unit. Provinces each
have a capital city, and usually have one or more cities while the rest of the province is
divided into districts. Although they exist at the same administrative level, the difference
between a city and a district are usually economic and demographic: cities are less oriented
towards agriculture than districts are and have a higher population density. Each level is
headed by a government official who leads an organizational body of both civil servants and
non-civil servant employees. Historically, these administrative units served as the long arm of
the central government in order to exert political and economic control over the population
during Suharto’s New Order regime; recently, however, the devolution of government after
the end of the New Order and during the decentralization era gave much more autonomy to
each administrative level.
Legislative power is held by both the executive and legislative branch where the DPR (and to
some extent the DPD, whose powers is vastly limited compared to its national counterpart)
11
holds most of it with its ability to pass laws, whereas the executive branch has the power to
issue regulations relating to governance practices. Laws and regulations in Indonesia exist
within a hierarchy as they are produced by different bodies, all of which derives from a
law/regulation above it. The order is as follows (Law no. 12 2011):
1. The 1945 Constitution (Undang-undang Dasar 1945, UUD 1945)
2. Resolutions of the People’s Consultative Assembly (Ketetapan MPR)
3. Laws/Acts and Government Regulation in Lieu of Laws/Acts (Undang-undang, UU
and peraturan pemerintah perubahan undang-undang, perpu)
4. Government Regulations (Peraturan Pemerintah, PP)
5. Presidential Regulations (Peraturan Presiden, Perpres)
6. Provincial Regulations (Peraturan Dearah Provinsi, Perda)
7. Regional/City Regulations (Peraturan Daerah Kabupaten/Kota, Perda)
Although the majority of legislative power is vested within the DPR, this separation of power
becomes blurred as many laws are often contradictory and in conflict with one another as well
as other regulations (source), thus giving the executive branch more power in certain matters
such as some aspects of environmental management. Furthermore, the slow process of
passing bills by Parliament allow national and local governments to pass regulations in order
to handle issues more promptly, in lieu of a more solid legal foundation (see Arumingtyas &
Nugraha, 2018; Thea, 2019).
Massive industrialization and development took place in the “New Order” era under the
second president Suharto that began in 1965 and ended in 1998 with his resignation due to
protests. As of 2019, after winning reelection, the government is headed by Joko Widodo
(Jokowi) who appoints a cabinet. Overall, there are four coordinating ministries in charge of
organizing a number of ministries under a specific theme or issue. These are the Coordinating
Ministry for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs (Kementerian Koordinator Bidang Politik,
Hukum, dan Keamanan); Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs (Kementerian
Koordinator Bidang Kemaritiman); Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and
Cultural Affairs (Kementerian Koordinator Bidang Pembangunan Manusia dan
Kebudayaan); Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs (Kementerian Koordinator
Bidang Perekonomian).
12
2.1.2 Environmental governance
Most of environmental and natural resource management is handled by ministries coordinated
by the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, most commonly the Ministry of
Agriculture (Kementerian Pertanian), Ministry of the Environment and Forestry
(Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup dan Kehutanan), and the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and
Spatial Planning (Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang). The Ministry of National
Development Planning/National Development Planning Agency (Badan Perencanaan
Pembangunan Nasional, BAPPENAS) is a non-departmental institution that decides the
overall development trajectory of national and local policies and is generally independent of
the coordinating ministries. In fact, all development-related policies and regulations produced
by ministries and local governments follow either the national or regional Long-term
Development Plans (Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Panjang, RPJP) and Medium-term
Development Plans (Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah, RPJM) produced by
BAPPENAS or its local counterparts Regional Development Planning Agency (Badan
Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah, BAPPEDA). The current national RPJP (RPJPN)
started in 2005 and ends in 2025 and consists of 4 national RPJMs (RPJMN). Regional RPJP
and RPJM mostly derive from their national counterpart with more specific objectives and
guidelines and gives room for current elected leaders or appointed officials to slightly alter
them to better fit the varied local contexts. Economic and environmental management at both
the national and local scales are therefore heavily influenced and controlled by these national
institutions, which greatly emphasize technocratic values (Li, 2011). However, many local
governments are still inexperienced in carrying out development projects effectively and in a
timely manner, especially those in outlying rural areas, and are vulnerable to corruption and
rent-seeking activities (Varkkey, 2013, 2016a). This makes it unclear how the long- and
medium-term development plans keep development projects in check. Nevertheless, these
plans serve as a foundation for laws, regulations, and policies throughout all levels of
government and are an important part of environmental governance. In addition, these
documents always have a regulatory version, themselves an appendix of said regulation.
13
2.1.3 Indigenous movements
At the same time, a growing indigenous (adat1) movement has been fighting for the limelight
with regards to political recognition and land rights and stewardship over the past few
decades. In 1999, the First Congress of the Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago (Kongres
Masyarakat Adat Nusantara I, KMAN I) took place which led to the formation of the
Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara,
AMAN) on March 17 (Arizona & Cahyadi, 2013). AMAN works toward the state’s
recognition of indigenous people and their rights across the nation, which includes the adat
political, belief, and justice systems. Indigenous justice and political systems in Indonesia
have thrived mostly within the realm of the private and informal (e.g. inheritance and
marriage), but when the authoritarian New Order regime leader Suharto stepped down amid
massive protests on May 1998, indigenous rights activists saw the opportunity to push the
indigenous case as a public struggle and to have a more prominent role in the Indonesian
state. Of great importance to this movement is their claim to land and natural resources which
the state has for so long “owns” and manage, thus unmasking a conflict of interests between
indigenous communities, migrants, and the state.
As of late, the current indigenous struggle has been to push the bill for the Recognition and
Protection of Indigenous People’s Rights (Rancangan Undang-undang tentang Pengakuan
dan Perlindungan Hak Masyarakat Adat) to be passed (Indigenous Peoples Human Rights
Defenders Network, 2016; Nnoko-Mewanu, 2019). This law would recognize the rights of
indigenous communities across the country toward land ownership and allow for a quicker
process for land registration – currently, the lack of clear indigenous “identification” is a
massive hindrance to state recognition of indigenous land and forests. The Dayak people of
Kalimantan, for example, have lived in the region for centuries but the expansion of forest
and oil palm plantations in recent decades forced these communities to sell their land, while
unaware of the far-reaching consequences of the sale (Nnoko-Mewanu, 2019). These land
grabs are sources of land conflicts, deemed to be one of the underlying causes of forest fires,
one that the government acknowledges (Dennis et al., 2005). Stories of “revenge burning” as
a feature of land conflicts and the use of fire in shifting cultivation by indigenous
communities have been used to shift most of the blame of forest fires to these groups, despite
evidence showing national and corporate interests in slash-and-burn practices for plantation
1 The English definiton of adat have been varied, from indigenous, traditional, customary, a set of customary
rules etc.
14
expansion (Alcorn et al., 2003; Fox, 2000; Gellert, 1998; Wijedasa et al., 2017; Wrangham,
2002).
2.2 From forestry to oil palm dominance
Much of oil palm plantations today were originally forest land, historically owned by various
different actors and groups, gradually converted into the monoculture. Susanti and Maryudi
(2016) found that the rising prominence of palm oil as a commodity occurred through three
phases: 1) from around 1980, (2) up to the downfall of the New Order regime in 1998, and (3)
the era of decentralized government after it. They argue that the oil palm industry flourished
due to an amalgamation of forest crisis narratives and the prevailing development trajectory at
each time period at larger scales (national and global) (Susanti & Maryudi, 2016). Similarly,
Prabowo et. al (2017) demonstrated how the power dynamics and interactions between actors
at local levels (district and village) in West Kalimantan paved the way to palm oil’s
dominance in the province.
During the first five-year development plan (Rencana pembangunan lima tahun I, Repelita I)
from 1969-1974 – a series of development plans that were predecessors to the current RPJMN
– oil palm was put aside in favor of timber citing the fact that the industrial and knowledge
infrastructure for oil palm was lacking and that the forest-based industry would at the time
generate more income in a short period of time, in line with Repelita I’s overall goal which
was to boost the national economy. This took the form of major government support through
investments and stimulus into the timber industry, helping forest products become “second
after oil and gas” by 1990 in terms of exports (FAO, 2002).
By the third development plan (Repelita III 1979-1984) however, timber production was
beginning to lag compared to increasing domestic and international demand resulting in
accelerating deforestation and land degradation as the industry tried to keep up. The
development plan attempted to manage this decline through rehabilitating forest areas by
introducing industrial forest plantations, but this was too slow and could not affect the rate of
deforestation and degradation that was taking place. Between 1985-1997 it is estimated that
21.5 million ha of forests were lost (FWI/GFW, 2002).
Although oil palm plantations existed before Indonesia’s independence in 1945, the first
phase of oil palm expansion began around the 1960s, when palm oil was primarily used to
15
meet food demands. From mid- to late-1980s under the Nucleus-Estate Smallholder (NES)
projects, a type of contract farming that was coupled with the Transmigration programs,
newly settled farmers were supported in developing oil palm plantations (for a “nucleus”
company), among other commodities, as part of the many poverty alleviation and regional
development projects at the time. It was reported that regulations regarding forest exploitation
were altered in order to facilitate the conversion of forests into oil palm (Setiawan, Maryudi,
Purwanto, & Lele, 2016). Palm oil became an important and prioritized commodity and in
1991 the market for oil palm products was liberalized and the export for crude palm oil (CPO)
deregulated. This allowed for large oil palm companies to control the market and expand
extensively and the transition to the second phase of oil palm expansion was taking place. As
the overall contribution of the forestry sector to the national economy dwindles, a gap was
widening for palm oil production, with private companies at the helm. The degradation of
forest areas and continuing deforestation became the highlight of the 1997-98 forest fires.
The rise of the oil palm industry was not without power struggles at the local level. During
this time in the province of West Kalimantan, villagers in the Sekayam-Mengkiyang
production forest area (Hutan Produksi Sekayam-Mengkinyang) in Sanggau District, engaged
with actors from the national and local governments, private companies, and community
leaders in several land disputes over the management of forests as well as extraction of timber
and palm oil. Prabowo et al. (2017) observed the power dynamics taking place between these
actors using Actor-centered Power (ACP) as a framework and identified three elements of
power: coercion, which alters behavior by force; dis/incentives, which alters behavior by
advantages and/or disadvantages; and dominant information, which alters behavior by
unverified information. Much of the existing non-forest areas (NFA) were managed by the
local communities and the Ministry of Forestry (MoF) at the time, in order to increase timber
production, had NFAs converted into industrial forest plantations and the license given to the
timber company PT2 Finnantara Intiga (PT-FI) (despite an existing regulation requiring forest
plantations to operate within state forest areas). Incentives given by PT-FI to villagers to earn
their trust and the promise that they will receive financial benefits from production
demonstrates the interplay between incentives and dominant information power dynamics.
Nevertheless, coercion by the MoF as well as the provincial government was still dominant
up to 1999 (Prabowo et al., 2017).
2 Perseroan Terbatas (corresponds to Limited Company or Naamloze Vennootschap in Dutch)
16
Following Suharto’s resignation and the end of the New Order regime in 1998, the
government began to decentralize much of its decision-making and planning, starting in 1999.
Political and economic autonomy were given to local governments, allowing them to gain and
manage local revenue through taxes and local businesses and the delivery of public services.
The latest iteration of decentralization, marked by Law 23/2014, allowed provincial
governments to manage all forestry affairs, including issuing permits, “in order to overcome
issues of environmental protection” (Talitha, Firman, & Hudalah, 2019). However, the
monitoring of forestry resources and the planning process are still under the jurisdiction of the
national government, allowing for the designation of Special Regions (Kawasan Khusus) that
serve specific national interests (Talitha et al., 2019). This decentralization process marked
the third phase of oil palm expansion:
Licensing lands for new oil palm plantation has been seen as instant income
for the new autonomous regions. . . . Following the decentralization, the
demand for “pemekaran”[3] increased as a result of local elites generating
income and maintaining their existence in the new autonomous region
(Susanti & Maryudi, 2016, p. 132)
As provincial and district governments now have more autonomy in land management, oil
palm companies applied for licenses to expand their plantations even more. At the same time
logging companies began to close down and their land was handed over to oil palm
corporations to be converted to plantations; this was supported by government regulations at
the time (Susanti & Maryudi, 2016). In the West Kalimantan case, the oil palm company PT.
Citra Nusa Inti Sawit (PT-CNIS) applied for a license within the Sekayam-Mengkiyang
production forest area as soon as the regional autonomy law was put into action (Prabowo et
al., 2017). According to Prabowo et al. (2017) the permit application was approved by the
district government despite the fact that the land in question was under a timber license that
belonged to PT-FI but was apparently “abandoned.” Additionally, the land licensed to PT-
CNIS by the district government were in fact owned or at least used by local communities,
but the license was granted either way. It was implied in their interviews that PT-CNIS bribed
the district government to secure the necessary documentation. This kind of incentive-based
power play was seen again in 2000, when the MoF undertook a mapping survey that
reaffirmed that the Sekayam-Mengkiyam production forest area as forestland, a designation
that prohibits license applicants to plant oil palm but PT-CNIS did anyway the previous year.
With the land in question now definitively designated as forestland, PT-CNIS continued
3 The splitting of an administrative region to make a new one, bringing with it political power to local elites
17
operations despite their knowledge of the fact. Financial incentives were again offered, this
time to local communities who were asked to support their oil palm plantations.
Dissatisfaction with PT-FI increased among local communities as the promised incentives
were not fulfilled year after year, solidifying the trust put into PT-CNIS and allowing oil palm
to gain better foothold in the area. As the timber industry loosened its control on the locality,
the palm oil industry tightened its grip in its place. Additionally, the overall positive
perception of palm oil companies as well as the fact that the palm oil industry plays an
important role in rural development and employment, as exemplified by case above, help to
drive its continued expansion.
Around the same time at the turn of the 21st century, demand for palm oil increased rapidly as
concern for mounting greenhouse gas emissions influence international public policy and
countries became more interested in renewable alternatives to fossil fuel. In 1999 the growth
rate of palm oil production was the highest in the previous decade at 24% and in 2000
production passed 10 million metric tons (USDA, 2005). By 2007, Indonesia surpassed
Malaysia in palm oil production becoming the world’s biggest producer in the commodity
(USDA, 2007) as exports of palm oil-based biodiesel increased during that period, most of
which were headed to the EU. Anti-dumping duties, a tariff imposed on an import deemed to
be lower than the fair market value (Kenton, 2019), were imposed by the EU in 2013,
prompting a sharp decrease in Indonesian palm oil-based biodiesel exports (Wright &
Rahmanulloh, 2015). The removal of the duties in 2018 greatly increased the number of
exports to the EU once again, taking up to half of the overall shipments (Nangoy, 2018;
Wright & Rahmanulloh, 2019).
• Forestry today, how palm oil dominates the economic outlook
o Palm oil is not sustainable, a branding myth, very corrupt (mafia system)
Today oil palm plantations continue to expand in forested areas, mostly in the islands of
Sumatra and Kalimantan and the industry still enjoys massive gains as palm oil is the second
biggest export of the nation since 2009 (“Indonesia,” n.d.) with a large allocated domestic
market (Wright & Rahmanulloh, 2019). This is despite growing reluctance against use of
palm oil from trade partners such as the EU, who decided to phase out palm oil as a
renewable biofuel by 2030 as its extraction was seen to cause detrimental effects on the
environment (Jong, 2019a; Munthe & Blenkinsop, 2019).
18
There have been efforts over the years to render the palm oil industry as a sustainable and
viable option for economic development, championed by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm
Oil (RSPO). The RSPO issues certification for ‘sustainable’ palm oil for commercial use and
have been successful in marketing it as so, but it has been argued that such sustainability is a
“branding myth” due to the existing social relations making palm oil production, in actuality,
unsustainable (Pye, 2019).
Moreover, the very nature of plantations, as used in the palm oil industry, engenders
“infrastructural violence” that is built into the plantation, as argued by Li (2018). For her, the
“mafia system” she observed, a system in which actors at every hierarchy of the plantation
economy—from the farmer, mill workers, co-op leaders, to government officials—engage in
rent-seeking activities and act as a “mafia” while people at the bottom of that hierarchy
suffers the most. Li argues that plantations are irredeemable and should not be allowed to
expand: “law, government, livelihoods and the scope for protest action are progressively
subordinated to plantation logics as zones become saturated and everyone is locked in” (Li,
2018, p. 330).
19
2.3 Forest fires
2.3.1 A brief history
Figure 2. El Nino precipitation impact (Met Office, n.d.b)
The debate surrounding forest fires has always been contentious, the lines between perpetrator
and victim blurred, the causes opaque, and efforts to curb them many. Fires in forested areas
have become an annual event for decades taking place around the archipelago, garnering
proper attention from the government in the early 1980s when 3.2 million hectares of forest
were burned in East Kalimantan (Gellert, 1998, p. 65). During this time, and as discussed
earlier, it was the timber industry that was the subject of scrutiny as logging practices,
coupled with an extended dry season due to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO),
created the necessary conditions to ignite fires. ENSO is a meteorological phenomenon that
constitutes the warming of sea surface temperatures above average readings (“El Niño, La
Niña and the Southern Oscillation,” n.d.). Indonesia experiences ENSO every few years at
irregular intervals, which results in extended droughts and low rainfall, although each ENSO
event can be different (“ENSO impacts,” n.d.). The fires that took place between the second
half of 1997 and early 1998 had devastating impacts both for Indonesia and neighboring
20
countries in the region. It was estimated up to 1.7 million hectares of forests and land were
burned and the haze they emitted often measured over 300 in the Pollutant Standard Index
(PSI) in some areas indicating hazardous levels of pollution (Tay, 1998). Around 1 billion
USD in economic losses were estimated for Indonesia while Malaysia and Singapore lost 310
million USD and 62.5 million USD respectively (Tay, 1998), though these numbers might
differ according to other sources.
The causes of subsequent fires that occurred are diverse and scalar but a common point is that
the national and local governments continue to frame smallholders and indigenous
communities who use fires to clear land as perpetrators (Gellert, 1998; Varkkey, 2016a),
although to varying degrees of contribution. This scapegoating of farmers and marginalized
communities serves to be a very advantageous project for the state which uses this as starting
point and build resource management policies around it. In doing so, international donor
organizations, who gave out loans to the state to expand forestland-based industries in the first
place can make governments “accountable” by dealing with the source of fires and continue
the “development project” as planned.
During massive expansions of oil palm plantations due to deregulations and liberalization of
the palm oil market in 1990s, the Transmigration program had already been underway for
almost a century (though not at its current form), continued from the Kolonisatie program
initiated by Dutch colonizers. This project placed landless people from “overpopulated”
islands of Java, Sumatra, and Bali to outlying islands such as Kalimantan and Papua. There
they were given land to farm and become more self-sufficient. In order for this to happen,
however, primary forests that were designated as transmigrant lands needed to be cut down to
make way for new settlements. Ecological differences between the “main islands” and the
Outer Islands were little accounted for, where the soil in the latter was less fertile compared to
that on the former when using the same crop i.e. rice from Java. Transmigrants’ adaptability
toward new agricultural conditions was overestimated and many did not know how to
effectively farm rice using methods they are used to, as observed by Levang and Sevin in a
report (1990). Originally, transmigrants engaged in mostly subsistence farming, as intended
by the World Bank, which who supported the Transmigration project financially. However,
by 1986 the Bank shifted its focus to crop agriculture and promoted the previously mentioned
NES program, which promoted the growth of plantations (Gellert, 1998).
21
By the time of Levang and Sevin’s (1990) report, the peat swamps of Kalimantan were
considered unproductive land and in the 1990s Suharto saw the opportunity for them to be
converted into rice paddies to support a food self-sufficiency program that would effectively
secure the nation’s food security (Goldstein, 2016a). The so-called Mega Rice Project was set
to adopt a Javanese-style wet rice production where, at the time, paddies in Java were
continually being converted into non-agricultural land uses, quickly losing its production
capacities. Throughout 1996 over one million ha of land in Central Kalimantan were cleared
and the peat drained to make way for proper rice cultivation (Galudra, van Noordwijk,
Suyanto Sardi, & Pradhan, 2010; Goldstein, 2016a). The dry peatlands resulting from the
draining process from the Mega Rice Project were particularly vulnerable to annual forest
fires. In 1997, a year that was affected by ENSO resulting in unusual dry periods, fires broke
out in the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra. The resulting fires unleashed large amounts of
carbon dioxide that are stored in the peat and emitted haze that crossed national boundaries
and garnered international attention. The Mega Rice Project was considered one of the worst
development projects, more so because it did not produce any rice in addition to causing one
of the biggest environmental disasters in Southeast Asia (Goldstein, 2016b).
Of course, the Mega Rice Project’s failure is only one of many factors that contributed to the
complexity of the 1997-98 fires. Dennis et al. (2005) conducted an extensive study on the
causes, direct and indirect, of the 1997-98 forest fires, employing ethnographic approaches
and remote sensing to explain the haze crisis and understand its underlying causes. The study
selected eight sites, four in each island of Sumatra and Kalimantan, which consist the
provinces Lampung, South Sumatra, Jambi in Sumatra and West Kalimantan and East
Kalimantan in Kalimantan. The study found four direct causes of the fires: (1) fires as a tool
in land clearing, (2) fire as a weapon in land disputes, (3) accidents, and (4) fires connected to
resources extraction activities. All of the direct causes were found in both Sumatra and
Kalimantan; fires that escaped from clearing for illegal logging as well as arson used in land
conflicts were found in most of the study sites. As for the underlying causes, five were listed:
(1) land tenure and land use allocation conflicts and competition; (2) forest degrading
practices; (3) economic incentives/disincentives; (4) population growth and migration; and (5)
inadequate firefighting and management policy. Besides reducing the use of fire as a tool for
land-clearing, Dennis et al. (2005) also pointed to resolving land tenure and land conflict-
related issues as many of the underlying causes stem from the information asymmetry
inherent in land disputes. Indeed, as well as conflicts between indigenous/local communities
22
and plantation companies, conflicts among the communities were also argued as an
underlying cause of the fires.
2.3.2 Patronage and the ASEAN context
The scale of the 1997-98 haze drew international criticism of Indonesia’s management of the
disaster, particularly from its Southeast Asian neighbors due to the transboundary haze that
spread in the duration of the fires. Malaysia had to declare a state of emergency for the state
of Sarawak for 10 days at one point, reporting economic losses up to USD 325 million, and
the whole country suffered drops in tourist visits that year. Public health concerns spiked, and
reports of haze-related medical issues rose by 10 percent. Singapore lost USD 69 million in
1997, 84 percent of the annual losses were attributed to the haze with the tourism industry
experiencing the majority of the loss (Varkkey, 2016a). Previous annual fires already
prompted member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to produce
several pollution-related agreements but the 1997-98 crisis solidified the ASEAN Agreement
on Transboundary Haze Pollution (ATHP) in 2002, which most of the members signed and
ratified by 2003.
Indonesia, however, was the last ASEAN country to sign the agreement, who ratified it by
September 2014, despite being the major source of haze. The reason for this delay, according
to Varkkey (2016a), is the entrenched and extensive patronage networks that consist of
individuals from palm oil/pulpwood companies, the state apparatus, and/or both. Patronage, in
the context of Southeast Asia and developing countries in general, often refers to the culture
of illegal rent-seeking that takes place within political-economic processes and transactions
and its unwritten rules. Thus, motions to ratify the agreement keep getting blocked by both
members of the legislature and government bureaucrats who appear to have vested interests in
the matter.
Shortly before Jokowi took office for his first term, Indonesia finally ratified the ATHP,
although this move was seen as unenthusiastic and “half-hearted” on Indonesia’s part (Bram
in Bell, 2014). Additionally, Singapore’s passing of its Transboundary Haze Pollution Act
likely prompted Indonesia to finally ratify the ATHP (Bell, 2014). Nevertheless, this was a
timely decision because starting late June 2015 wildfires broke out throughout Indonesia over
the next few months that caused one of the most devastating haze crises to ever hit the region.
The entirety of Singapore and parts of Malaysia were blanketed in smoke at some point but
23
the worse affected were provinces in Kalimantan and Sumatra where the smoke haze became
so thick it was regarded as a transportation hazard, prompted for schools and businesses to
close down, and posed immense public health risks (World Bank Group, 2015). A study by
Koplitz et. al (2016) estimated that the 2015 fires caused around 100,300 excess deaths across
Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Figure 3. Haze crisis of 2015 (National Environment Agency Singapore in McKirdy, 2015)
Helena Varkkey (Varkkey, 2016a) argued that the causes of haze (and consequently wildfires
in general) are very closely connected with the oil palm plantation sector and, more
importantly, the economic and political patronage networks that link the haze, fires, and palm
oil together. Varkkey conducted 138 semi-structured interviews between 2010 and 2012 that
included bureaucrats, journalists, NGO staff, and academics from Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Singapore. Through her research she was able to establish links between actors within the
palm oil and pulpwood industries, members of parliament, and government officials that form
the so-called patronage networks. This form of rent-seeking ultimately halted many attempts
by state, non-state, and extra-state (i.e. ASEAN) actors to deploy meaningful policies to
tackle the root causes of the fires and haze.
Varkkey (Varkkey, 2016a) found that many companies that operate in Kalimantan and
Sumatra are Malaysian and Singaporean. This was partly because of the liberalization of the
Indonesian market mentioned previously and the overall regionalization of the economy.
24
Economic regionalization refers to regional integration led by the private sector whose
economic interests created a regional economy but also interdependence. This was influenced
in two ways: through state-facilitated investment opportunities and through similar patronage
cultures between countries. Indonesia’s land mass proved to be attractive for Malaysian and
Singaporean plantation companies who are also closely associated with their respective
national governments and legislature, eager in growing their national economy. Negotiations
between states thus have these firms in mind. These countries also share a similar patronage
culture, as Varkkey pointed out. Similar cultural heritage and ancestry allowed for a smoother
cooperation between companies, bureaucrats, and members of parliament. Apart from internal
patronage networks in each country, Malaysian and Singaporean firms were able to infiltrate
Indonesian patronage networks and establish regional ones, further solidifying the
regionalization of the Southeast Asian economy.
Additionally, the organizational philosophy that ASEAN adopted, manifested in the “ASEAN
Way,” prevents fundamental intervention in regard to the fires and also environmental
problems in general. The ASEAN Way refers to the approach in regional diplomacy that
highlights “consensus, the principles of sensitivity and politeness, a non-confrontational
negotiation process, behind-the-scenes discussions, an emphasis on informal and non-
legalistic procedures, non-interference and flexibility” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 14). Especially
important are the principles of non-intervention and state sovereignty enshrined within this
approach. ASEAN’s organizational capacity is thus weak and unequipped in dealing with
environmental problems such as transboundary haze pollution.
To move forward, for Varkkey, the task of identifying the causes of the fires and main
perpetrators becomes less important when this model of regionalism meets the economic
regionalization of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The interdependence that arose from
such a regionalization results in policy paralysis that undermines state capacity where
“powerful patrons in the government and administration have little interest in making and
carrying out policies that are restrictive to the practises of their clients” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 9)
as well as ASEAN’s organizational capacity since the “cooperative agreements that were
produced were…designed to protect national economic interests and preserve state
sovereignty, and to deflect responsibility” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 10). Therefore, unless the issue
of patronage is taken seriously, smoke haze, transboundary or otherwise, will persist.
25
In the middle of 2019 Indonesia once again experienced massive fires, the worst since the
2015 crisis, and the resulting haze became transboundary and spread to Malaysia while
Singapore expressed their worry of the haze reaching them (Jong, 2019b). Between January
and May 2019, it was reported that 42,740 hectares of land was burned (Sari, 2019).
26
3 Theoretical Framework
3.1 The production and notions of nature
3.1.1 Nature and society
It is taken as granted by many in modern societies that nature is something that is separate
from humans and their immediate environment, that there are human environments and then
there are natural environments, a dichotomy that is well-bounded. As the number of people
migrate and live in urban areas causing more sprawl and more clear divisions between a built
and ‘natural’ environment, it is not hard to imagine why such a dichotomous notion exists.
Indeed, it has been considered natural to put nature as ‘out there’ for the advancement of
natural philosophy, as it was called during the Enlightenment era. Isaac Newton’s positivist
outlook regarding the workings of nature extracted the human, i.e. the subject, from nature
object and it has seldom been questioned how such a division affect how we treat and
appropriate nature. The social relationship between humans and nature has always been
complex and not always apparent.
Throughout history the notions and perceptions of nature have been diverse. Castree (2001b)
categorized three general ideas on nature prevalent in mainstream ideology: external nature,
intrinsic nature, and universal nature. External nature refers to the nature that is outside of
the social realm, “inherently nonsocial and nonhuman. . . . Society and nature are related but
ultimately distinct” (Castree, 2001, p. 6). Intrinsic nature is a nature that is seen as a “fixed
domain definable by one or other attribute” (Castree, 2001, p. 7) and is fundamentally
unchanging and unmalleable. Universal nature is nature that encompasses everything on
earth, “humans. . .are part of of a wider, global, ecological system” (Castree, 2001, p. 7).
Castree argues that all these notions of nature have largely ignored the social dimensions and
their relations with nature that are very much real and principally ‘a part’ of nature.
Common in these perceptions of nature is the idea that society merely interacts with nature to
varying degrees as a dualism instead of being integral to nature. Bruce Braun asserts that “any
inquiry into the status of ‘nature’ in geographical thought today must necessarily take up the
question of dualism and attempts to overcome it” (2009, p. 22). In a chapter in A Companion
to Environmental Geography, (Castree, Demeritt, Liverman, & Rhoads, 2009), he explores
27
some of the ways geographers have attempted to overcome the nature-society dualism. First,
he cites the Marxist tradition characterized by the works of Alfred Schmidt, Neil Smith, and
James O’Connor among others. Marxist geographers approached the dualism of nature-
society through the use of dialectics, as Marx did using historical materialism. The production
of nature thesis introduced by Smith (2008) promoted the idea that
humanity and nature stood in an internal relation, rather than an external one, pointed
to an important analytical project: if nature is something produced, then the question
becomes how and why it is that human and nonhuman natures are produced in the
forms they are at any particular historical moment. (Braun, 2009, p. 25, italics in
original)
Thus, through this dialectical and metabolic process, nature is ‘produced’. The production of
nature will be explored more in depth in the next section.
Secondly, another way geographers are addressing the nature-society dualism is through the
‘New Materialist approach’, as a criticism to Marxist geography. For new materialists, the a
priori dualism of nature and society should be challenged and instead we should look into
how “there is not a ‘social’ realm in one location and a separate ‘natural’ realm elsewhere, nor
a dialectical relation between them” (Braun, 2009, p. 27). This approach adopts a ‘flat
ontology’ where everything exists and interact with each other in a ‘plane of immanence’,
which follows the works of Giles Deleuze, without the assumption of any “transcendental
cause. . .which lies above, beyond or behind worldly phenomena, and which determines their
form” (Braun, 2009, p. 27-28). Emphasis is put on the lack of hierarchies such as classes that
determine phenomena, rather, contingent differentiation in both human and nonhuman nature,
even within the same species (or any other abstract categorization), form a specific
ontological truth with regard to any phenomenon. Additionally, New Materialism provides a
radical view of agency where it is seen not as “an innate property that belongs to things, but
an emergent effect of the ways in which entities enter into combination with others” (Braun,
2009, p. 28). In other words, agency does not belong to any one thing or object, but to the
larger network of actors. With all this in mind, new materialists questioned the epistemology
of Marxist geography, particularly concerning representation within the subject-object
dichotomy vis-à-vis the process of knowing the world. The subject comes to know about the
object through a certain representation of the object, thus the meaning ascribed to the object
depends on how it is represented to the subject. For new materialists, this “application of a
disembodied reason” ignores the possibility of embodied practices that come to mediate the
28
process of knowing. Humans, they argue, encounter nature as “a set of physical affects. . . .
[where] nonhuman entities are not merely vessels that humans fill with meaning; through
their ‘performances’ they add something of their own to the story” (Braun, 2009, p. 30).
It is important to acknowledge the critiques against the Marxist perspective as part of an
ongoing debate outside the scope of this thesis. Simon Choat argues that, unlike new
materialism where the nature of matter is scrutinized and investigated, the goal of historical
materialism is to “interrogate the historically specific material conditions of human
production and reproduction, and hence the material conditions of the development and uses
of science, the production and role of objects and agents, and our labour within and upon
nature” (2018, p. 1028, italics in original). This is not to say that new materialism serves no
value – in fact, the practice-oriented analysis approach used in this thesis originates from
Bruno Latour’s (1996) actor-network theory, a key concept within new materialist literature.
Rather, this thesis uses the Marxist geographic tradition as a starting point and attempt to
establish a link with some parts of new materialism.
With the strong presence of capitalism and neoliberalism in certain parts of the world,
particularly Indonesia and Southeast Asia, ‘trickling down’ from northern countries as a
response to Keynesian economics in the post-war era (Springer, 2017), it is worth bringing the
nature of capital into the investigation which is where Smith’s capitalist production of nature
thesis takes significance. James McCarthy and Scott Prudham (2004) argue that
neoliberalism, as a variant of free-market capitalism, is not a mere economic doctrine but also
an “ideological and political project” that is interwoven with environmental change and
politics, and produce a certain neoliberal nature. They posit that it is a necessity for
neoliberalism to also act as an environmental project in reconfiguring the social relations to
nature. Informed by classical liberalism, neoliberalism is similar in several ways exemplified
by the relation between property and owner, between the state and the environment, and
between social struggles and neoliberal projects. John Locke, as an important figure in
classical liberal thought, provided important points with regard to property rights by
(i) conferring value on nature only through the application of human labor, and
conversely, by denigrating ‘‘unimproved’’ nature as value-less; (ii) constructing a
moral economy of liberal society based on exclusive control of land by those
individuals who work it, including enlistment of the state to protect individual land
rights; and then, (iii) arguing for the unlimited individual accumulation of land and
property, including beyond that which individuals could work themselves. (McCarthy
& Prudham, 2004, p. 277)
29
This positions social relations with nature equal to the exploitation of nature through
commodification under the pretext of individual freedom and equality. Private property and
acts of ‘working the land’, thus, require the state to deploy property rights laws and act as
protectors of landowners – a key aspect within both classical liberalism and neoliberalism. In
conjunction, laissez-faire ideas within classical liberalism compel the “administrative state [to
act] as environmental regulator. . . . [which] prescribed major political ecological
restructurings” (McCarthy & Prudham, 2004, p. 278). In other words, to allow for little
government intervention as prescribed in both liberalism and neoliberalism, the state would
need to rollback certain environmental policies and reconfigure whole environments.
Using Karl Polanyi’s concept of the double movement (1944) where the process of
marketization (of nature) will always be met with a counterbalancing force by society to resist
it, McCarthy and Prudham (2004) observed how sociopolitical struggles against liberalism
took the form of environmentalism, as early conservation projects in the West demonstrates.
This informs some of the countermovements against neoliberalism: “contemporary
environmental concerns and their politics have been, in many respects, the most passionately
articulated and effective political sources of response and resistance to neoliberal projects”
(McCarthy & Prudham, 2004, p. 278). Despite this, environmentalism has increasingly
adopted free-market mechanisms which further reinforce neoliberal ideology, as can be seen
in “tradeable emission permits, transferable fishing quotas, user fees for public goods, and
aspects of utility privatization” (McCarthy & Prudham, 2004, p. 279). Nature, it seems, has
become an “accumulation strategy” (Katz, 1998; Smith, 2007a) where it is subsumed into the
capitalist system.
Neoliberal nature as described by McCarthy and Prudham (2004) provides some insight into
how the nature-society relationship is (re)configured under capitalism/neoliberalism. Nature,
the state, and environmentalist movements are easily coopted in to the capitalist logic. The
following sections will explore how this takes place.
3.1.2 The production of nature
In his book Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space (1984, 1992,
2008), Neil Smith proposed a rather controversial but original thesis concerning the
relationship between society and nature. He proposed that nature is, contrary to how nature
was viewed for a long time, in fact not separate from society as something beyond the realm
30
of the social and human. Nature, Smith argued, is produced through the activities of humans
throughout history and even more so under capitalism. While almost contradictory at a
glance, one can easily follow the train of thought that buildings are made of rocks and ores
mined from a quarry, electronics from a mix of various elements and crude oil from
underground reserves, books from trees around the world. Humans, throughout history, have
produced their own nature from a nature that was once “pristine”; here Smith borrowed from
Alfred Schmidt (1971, 2014), among others, the concepts of first and second nature – women
and men produce second nature from first nature. Second nature is the human-produced built
environment out of the raw and pristine nature; but as we shall see, under (modern)
capitalism, Smith modified the definitions of first and second nature.
As a Marxist geographer, Smith took on the task of applying Marx’s analytical methods to
“reconstruct the methodological coordinates” (Loftus, 2017, p. 2) of his approach to assess the
nature-society dualism. This is done by, first, historicizing the relations between society and
nature. He starts out by exploring the ideology of nature that was and is common in the public
consciousness and demonstrated how, since early human history, productive activity
continually breaks down the imaginary barrier between nature and society. Indeed,
“primitive” societies – as defined by Robert Sack (1980) – had a different conception of their
environment in that it is not seen as separate from themselves. As society develops, so too did
their philosophies, and thus “civilized” societies saw nature as ‘out there’ waiting to be
conquered, understood, and extracted.
This latter point is illustrated by Smith through the Newtonian conception of space. Indeed, in
geography and perhaps in general, it is difficult to talk about nature without also talking about
space. Newton’s seminal works introduced the concept of, as Neil sees it, absolute space in
which matter is contained and activities of all sorts take place. Despite Newton’s admission
that the general notion of space was relative at the time—that is, “time, space, place and
motion. . . [are conceived] from the relation they bear to sensible objects” (Newton in
Jammer, 1969, italics added)—his work was explicit in differentiating space into absolute and
relative terms to serve the purposes of physical investigations. Simply put, space was the
container where matter exists and interact, and thus separate from matter – this notion is
sustained throughout the industrial revolution until today.
According to Smith, there are three strands in the history of the development of the
conception of space in physics that helps its translation in to the social sciences, though only
31
two will be discussed here (the other pertains to Einstein’s relativity). The first thread is
abstraction of space from matter which corresponds to Sack’s previously mentioned
“primitive” conception of space. Here space is part and parcel of the human psyche and forms
their identity, land is “seen in terms of social relations. The people, linked to nature, are
intimately linked to the land” (Sack, 1980, p. 22). Newton’s role in this was his successful
differentiation of absolute and relative space, the latter being a subset of the former. But the
consequence of this is that since the space in which material activities of humans take place
(i.e. social space) are defined through their relation to matter, physical space (absolute space)
is separated from social space. Social space is thus defined in terms of relative space.4
Secondly, Smith examined the material basis for the conception of space and its development
throughout history. It is important to remember that concepts are made in conjunction and
correspond to the material activity of women and men throughout periods of history. Alfred
Sohn-Rethel (1978) argued that the abstraction of space and time discussed above was
accompanied by the development of commodity exchange, since, for Sohn-Rethel, the act of
(commodity) exchange requires the universalization of space and thus nature: “Time and
space assume thereby that character of absolute historical timelessness and universality which
must mark the exchange abstraction as a whole and each of its features” (Sohn-Rethel, 1978,
p. 49). More importantly, the separation of social space from physical space required the
abstraction of society from nature. Here physical space becomes synonymous with “natural
space” as the development of natural philosophy in the Enlightenment period flourishes,
while social space would only be coined in the late 19th century by Emile Durkheim: “Just as
mathematical space has come to represent the abstract field of natural events, social space is
the humanly constituted abstract field of societal events” (Durkheim in Smith, 2008). Already
it becomes clear how a nature “out there” comes to be conceptualized.
Smith’s main focus, however, is geographical space in general. Here he employs Marx’s
concept of use-value where the form it takes comprises its spatial properties, whereas its
usefulness relative to other objects and activities makes up a set of spatial relations.
Geographical space is thus “the totality of spatial relations organized to a greater or lesser
extent into identifiable patterns, which are themselves the expression of the structure and
development of the mode of production” (Smith, 2008, italics added).
4 The relativity of space used here must not be confused with Einstein’s use of relativity.
32
But how is geographical space produced under capitalism? Continuing the previous
discussion about natural space, it was the universalization of wage-labor that separated social
relations from natural space. Indeed, the ability to sell one’s labor power provides the worker
more freedom to move much more freely and choose to whom to sell their labor. However,
this led to the ever-increasing need to simultaneously produce relative space. The example
Smith used was the minimization of transportation time and costs within a production
process; in order for capital to be accumulated, places of production and consumption need to
become increasingly integrated, the relative space between them is restructured, resulting in
higher employee productivity while lowering their wages or benefits. A capitalist society,
thus, “no longer accepts space as a container, but produces it; we do not live, act, and work
‘in’ space so much as by living, acting, and working we produce space” (Smith, 2008, p. 116).
At the same time, through its production of relative space, capital does indeed produce
absolute space – the necessity for capital to be immobilized within space (also known as sunk
or fixed capital) in the forms of factories and warehouses to produce surplus value
demonstrates this fact, while simultaneously producing a differentiated geographical space.
We can draw a conclusion from the discussion of the production of geographical space above
about their relationship with labor in terms of nature as space: “Human labour produces the
first nature [natural space], human relations produce the second [social space]” (Smith, 2008,
p. 79). Here, first nature and second nature form the differentiated (but total) nature that Smith
defines in the context of his production of nature and is understood in terms of use-value and
exchange value. That is, first nature is the nature produced through labor, identified through
its use-value and can be imagined as materially existing in natural/absolute space, e.g.
plantations, quarries, and fish farms. Second nature, on the other hand, is the nature that is
commodified and abstracted by humans in terms of exchange value; nature is valued and/or
quantified in monetary terms to be sold in the market. As stated in the previous quote, second
nature is produced by human relations and first nature by human labor. But since labor is
intricately linked and part of human relations, first nature is thus produced through second
nature. In other words, in modern capitalism, the production of the concrete and material first
nature is done through and guided by the necessities of the ideological and abstract second
nature i.e. the commodification of nature.
In short, nature as geographical space is produced under capitalism in such a way that
reinforces the relations of capitalist production. This does not mean, however, the totality of
33
nature today is produced, so to speak, despite Smith’s critics assertions of such a notion
(Loftus, 2017). In fact, the causal implication of this abstract nature-society relationship
should be put away for the time being. Rather, it should be understood that concrete and
particular instances of the production of nature alter the way in which humans live in and
interact with (first and second) nature.
3.1.3 The socioecological fix as produced nature
One of the ways in which the production of nature manifests is through the socioecological
fix. Recent work by Michael Ekers and Scott Prudham (2017, 2018) develops the concept of
the socioecological fix as an extension of David Harvey’s spatial fix to account for the
various ways capital creates fixes to offset socioecological crises, in addition to crises of
overaccumulation. Discussed in two separate articles, Ekers and Prudham first elucidate how
socioecological fixes are a form of produced nature through processes of capital switching
(2017) and expand on that to argue that such produced natures not only enter a metabolic
relationship with its immediate environment but also influence everyday life, near and far, by
buttressing hegemonic forces that create the socioecological fixes in the first place (2018).
The spatial fix
David Harvey’s (2001) spatial fix refers to the characteristically geographic alterations of
space and nature in response to tendencies of crises of overaccumulation and these spatial
modifications are attempts to resolve these crises but only manage to prolong its inevitability.
Crises of overaccumulation can be “devaluation of existing capital investments and
commodities in circulation, downward pressure on wages or employment, and capital flight,”
but ultimately “the specifics are matters of historical-geographical detail and contingency”
(Ekers & Prudham, 2017, p. 1375).
One facet of the spatial fix is the idea of “sunk capital,” that is, as opposed to circulating
capital, sunk capital takes on a form that lasts longer and does not have the mobility that
circulating capital does. Harvey argues that there are two forms of sunk capital: fixed capital
and the spatial infrastructure of the consumption fund. Fixed capital here refers to “relatively
enduring forms of invested capital the value of which is given up or realized relatively slowly
over the course of several production cycles,” meaning that, in this context, fixed capital is
directly involved in the production process (for whatever sector). For example, this can take
34
the form of a denim factory, whose fixity is contrasted with circulating commodities of raw
denim materials and finished denim products. A more “socionatural” example, as given by
Ekers and Prudham (2017), are the immobile grape vines that lasts decades while the
commodity grapes are produced at much shorter production period. The spatial infrastructure
of the consumption fund, on the other hand, are similar to fixed capital but aids or facilitate
consumption instead of production and obviously spatially explicit. This is manifest in spatial
formations such as hospitals, although some forms such as roads and shopping malls function
as both fixed capital and consumption fund. It is important to note that Ekers and Prudham
use sunk capital and fixed capital interchangeably, so that the consumption fund is regarded as
fixed capital as well.
Figure 4. David Harvey's circuits of capital (Aoyama, Murphy, & Hanson, 2011)
Relevant to explaining how surplus capital is invested in to the built environment as fixed
entities is Harvey’s (1978) three circuits of capital investment flows: the primary, secondary,
and tertiary. The primary circuit is the recognizable single period of production and
consumption of commodities whose turnover times are much shorter compared to the other
two circuits. The secondary circuit refers to the site in which capital flows into the
aforementioned fixed capital and consumption funds. The tertiary circuits are where
35
investments for the reproduction of capital and social reproduction take place, e.g. social
services, research and development, and so on. Overaccumulation occurring within the first
circuit “can be ameliorated by diversion of some portion of capital into secondary and tertiary
circuits;” in other words, capital switching is the process of capital being switched or
transferred into these different circuits, to manage crisis, “leading to the formation of longer
term investments in the built environment as an aspect of the spatial fix framework” (Ekers &
Prudham, 2017, p. 1376). This is due to the longer turnover times of the realization of value in
the secondary and tertiary circuits compared to the primary circuit or, in short, how it takes
longer to profit off of fixed capital and infrastructure in order to continue generate wealth.
Ekers and Prudham (2017) made several observations regarding Harvey’s spatial fix that
prove instrumental in developing the concept of the socioecological fix:
1. The dual connotation of the fix: fixing the overaccumulation problem and fixity
in geographical space. On one hand, a (spatial) fix serves to solve the problem of
overaccumulation through switching capital into the aforementioned secondary and/or
tertiary circuits thus staving off devaluating tendencies. On the other hand, spatial
fixes are geographically fixed and immobile; capital is being “sunk” into the built
environment as a solution for a problem in a certain time period. This produces a
contradiction manifesting in the same sunk capital losing value over time, producing a
new problem in the future: “at some point or other, the value embodied. . .becomes the
barrier to be overcome” (Harvey, 1982, p. 380).
2. Fixes offset crises not only spatially but also in a temporal manner. Continuing
from the previous point, the offsetting of crises through spatial fixes means that the
value of long-term sunk capital investments is realized over longer periods of time and
are thus vulnerable to unforeseen risks such as environmental change or sociopolitical
turmoil. In other words, fixes have an explicit temporal aspect that influence not only
the relevant production process(es) but also social production in general.
3. The importance of finance in facilitating fixed capital investments. Due to its long-
term nature, fixed capital requires the financial services of the banking and credit
sectors in order to realize value, particularly small enterprises whose assets cannot
facilitate the switching of capital into fixed investments (i.e. the secondary circuit).
36
Additionally, larger firms benefit from the capacity provided by finance capital in
securing risky long-term investments and protecting themselves from said risks.
4. The tendency for individual capitalists to avoid large-scale and long-term
infrastructure projects. Unlike firms, individual capitalists are disincentivized to be
financially involved in spatial infrastructure projects because of costs, the
investment’s long duration, and risk of devaluation over time. Since most of spatial
fixes are public infrastructures that have diverse users and slow return of investment,
individual capitalists do not expect sufficient returns by investing in such projects – at
least not by themselves. What this implies is that fixed capital/infrastructure
investments are usually secured by large groups of individuals like governments and
private firms who own sufficient capital to invest in such large-scale and long-term
projects. With any project of this scale, consent and legitimacy is paramount; fixed
capital formations do not just “happen,” they are formed through social and political
struggles by different people, powerful or otherwise:
The actual “doing” of capital intensive projects involving large-scale
transformations of the built environment through the diversion of sunk capital,
whether in urban settings or otherwise, is likely to involve the formation of
complex coalitions of social actors and, indeed, to lead to complex politics of
struggle and contestation over the specific trajectory and ultimate legitimacy of
such projects. (Ekers & Prudham, 2017, p. 1376)
The production of first and second nature
Ekers and Prudham (2017, 2018) took to Smith’s production of nature thesis to explore the
metabolic processes involved in the formation of spatial/socioecological fixes. As explained
previously, Smith’s differentiation of first and second nature under capitalism points to first
nature being produced through the (capitalist) labor process as use-values, a material nature
that is transformed through work, including the socioecological fix. On the other hand,
second nature is the commodification of nature and understood through abstract and
idealized exchange values whose imperatives guide the production of material first nature. A
point worth discussing is that the material character of first nature does not connotate the
exclusion of “semiotic” and ideological processes contained within. Rather, human labor is
metabolic in that as first nature is produced, that transformation involves the production of
different notions of nature as well, manifested in diverse ideologies and representations of
nature. Second nature, then, is alienated nature because its value relies on the abstraction of
37
exchange value from the use-value inherent in the capitalist production process. This is
expressed through the socially necessary labor time needed to produce a commodity, for
example: trees are transformed into paper and sold for a certain price that is determined by
how much labor is done in cutting, milling, and processing the wood into pulp and then into
sheets of paper. Nature, in this way, is alienated and “increasingly subsumed by the logic of
exchange and commodification, subordinated ‘to the creation and accumulation of value
which determines the relation with nature under capitalism’ (Smith [1984], 2008, p. 70)”
(Ekers & Prudham, 2017, p. 1380), which Ekers and Prudham term as Smith’s capitalist law
of nature (in reference to Marx’s capitalist law of value). This second nature is how the
alienation of nature and the nature-society dualism is accounted for in the production of
nature under capitalism.
The significance of Smith’s conception of first and second nature is that socioecological fixes,
as a form of the material-semiotic production of first nature, is metabolic, thus fixed capital
formations carries and ascribe specific meanings to different people. In other words, as
socioecological fixes are deployed, first nature is transformed and its value dictated by
existing second nature, while at the same time meanings of past, present, and future
socionatures related to a fix (or the socionature before the fix) are transformed as well in the
process. Using an example of building a dam, the physical material environment i.e. the
landscape is transformed, and its value is determined by how much wealth it can create
through selling water or electricity. Meanwhile, the socionature of nearby villagers are much
different now that a dam exists within their immediate environment, providing new jobs but
perhaps restricting their once available access to water.
The underproduction of nature
As capitalism is required to materially and socially reproduce the conditions of its growth and
accumulation and that the production of nature is part (albeit not a result) of this reproduction,
some natures are produced “unintentionally” or insufficiently for continued accumulation.
James O’Connor’s (1988, 1998) work on this tendency points to the underproduction of
nature; a produced nature that does not meet the conditions of accumulation, that is, as Ekers
and Prudham argues, linking Smith and O’Connor together, “the capitalist production of first
natures includes both intended and unintended products. . . . In turn, these unintended
products might give rise to impediments (technical, economic, political, or some combination
38
of these) to subsequent accumulation along the same trajectory” (Ekers & Prudham, 2017, p.
1382). As stated before, capital being switched into secondary circuits as sunk capital or
socioecological fixes often have a collective character that require complex coalitions of
different actors so that individual or small groups of capitalists/firms have a tendency to
underinvest in such projects. This means that the environmental conditions of their own
accumulation can be reproduced inadequately in a locality and become an impediment; a
forest plantation that does not replant trees for continued harvest is one example. When this
happens, capital flight can occur where new locations with better conditions are scouted for
the continuation of accumulation and a new production site is then made.
On the other hand, besides necessary conditions for material (re)production, social
movements come into play when the underproduction of nature affects social reproduction,
threatening a crisis of legitimacy. This aspect of the underproduction of nature underpins the
discrepancy between the necessary conditions of capitalist production and social
reproduction. The lack of drinking water provided by a private company due to its over-
extraction of a nearby source can cause discontent among its clients, some of whom may
work in their facility. More importantly, the responsibility for the reproduction of necessary
social conditions becomes the object of contestation where “social movements, factions of
capital, the state, and state-like institutions” (Ekers & Prudham, 2017) struggle over who
should bear responsibility. The reason behind this is because of the nature of the relationship
between social reproduction and capital accumulation: inputs for accumulation has been also
important for social reproduction, e.g. household labor for the reproduction of labor power as
direct input of capitalist production. However, such inputs like household labor and education
are noncommodified or only partially commodified, meaning that it is often regarded by firms
as “free gifts” (or partially free) whose responsibility for its reproduction is displaced away
from private capital and onto state actors and civil society. To put it in simple terms, using an
example, the social reproduction of labor power by the family is a free service appropriated
by firms, and the concern for some capitalists is merely the wage they give to the laborer
while his/her social reproduction is under the responsibility of the state and broader society.
In relation to the underproduction of nature, the displacement of responsibility with regards to
the reproduction of socionatural conditions is in parallel with capitalist firms’ avoidance in
taking responsibility for social reproduction in general since nature and/or ecosystem services
are seen as free gifts.
39
For Ekers and Prudham, the social struggle over the underproduction of nature does not
necessitate ‘positive’ change on capital’s part, since future investments for the reproduction of
socionatures may align with their interests at some point – one way of doing this is the private
acquisition of such socionatures and how spatial fixes become more characteristically
socioecological, thus appropriating nature as an “accumulation strategy” (Katz, 1998; Smith,
2007a). As Ekers and Prudham states: “the underproduction of nature in one moment creates
a landscape of investment opportunity, or a possible fix, at another moment for those firms
and the coalition of actors interested in producing the conditions of production. . .that were
initially compromised” (Ekers & Prudham, 2017, p. 1383).
Additionally, it was important for Ekers and Prudham to affirm an explicit relational
understanding of underproduction, in that the underproduction of nature is not ontological or
quantitative in any way. Instead, underproduction is contingent on which perspective is taken;
capital, the state, the laborer, etc.; polluting rivers is merely waste disposal for a factory and
necessary for its production process but detrimental to nearby communities whose laborers
work in the factory and might go on a strike because of it. The capitalist logic has a tendency
to “shuck” responsibility for the underproductions of nature (or the ‘wrong’ kind of
production of nature), on the other hand social movements and struggles for the ‘correct’
production of nature are part and parcel of the metabolic process of accumulation.
Finally, and mentioned previously, “socionatures are also sites of contested meanings and
representations” (Ekers & Prudham, 2017, p. 1384). Crises that are socioecological in nature
mean different things to different people – this ideological dimension of the production of
nature renders it even more relevant, and begs the question: “how [do] we produce nature and
who controls this production of nature?” (Smith, 2008, p. 89).
Hegemony and ideology in socioecological fixes
In exploring how socioecological fixes are influenced by and, more importantly, influence
culture and everyday life, Ekers and Prudham (2018) turn to Gramsci and his work on
hegemony. Hegemony can be defined as the “reinforcement and reproduction of power
relations, authority, and legitimacy through processes of reification (of particular modes of
production, class and other social formations, ways of life, institutions, practices, etc.)
whereby prevailing norms take on the guise of ‘common sense’” (Ekers & Prudham, 2018, p.
28). They see that the production of nature (in fixed capital form) as not only just a physical
40
process or a collection of physical materials but also a “cultural creation” and help determine
what is considered natural, from biophysical objects to ideological relations, at the same time
obscuring historically contingent social movements that produced that nature. Infrastructure,
being the classic example of fixed capital, does not only serve an economic function for the
state, but also embodies certain meanings, enforcing and securing the current legitimacy of
the state as well as the “consolidation of specific socioecological relations” (Ekers &
Prudham, 2018, p. 29) whereby nature, both materially and ideologically, is produced, so to
speak, into a nature that is subservient to humans.
Two aspects of Gramsci’s understanding of ideology is important here. Firstly, the
materialism of ideology is obvious, where “ideologies are expressed physically within
landscapes and institutions” (Ekers & Prudham, 2018, p. 29). Notions of ‘progress’ and
‘development’ are often produced and reproduced through glass and steel, skyscrapers, and
skylines, along with it the might of the state and the powerful. Secondly, ideology has a
“performative character,” that is, ideology is lived in everyday situations and actively
organizes mundane life, through which it is in turn reproduced. This means that if ideologies
and representations embodied within a socioecological fix fail to be reproduced in everyday
society, that fix can also fail in general. In other words, socioecological fixes, indeed fixes in
general, are not guaranteed to succeed or even succeed within the intended time period. How
a fix succeeds depends on “how well it reconciles the imperatives of the circulation and
realization of value with those of social life more generally” (Ekers & Prudham, 2018, p. 30).
This uncertainty opens the way for social struggles to take better control of and determine
how socioecological fixes are deployed and how nature and society is transformed in the
process.
Spatiotemporality
Explicitly recognizing the spatiotemporal nature of the socioecological fix is imperative in
understanding its repercussions on social and political life. Wim Carton (2019) describes the
offsetting crises into the future through fixes as part of the wider “political economy of delay”
in which unsustainable production processes are protected from more radical actions due to
the offsetting of emissions in other sectors. He argues that negative emission technologies
(NETs)—the removal of carbon from the atmosphere—is a kind of fix in that they defer the
devaluation of fixed capital: “the main mechanism by which negative emissions operate as a
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fix is through the temporal deferral of mitigation action; that is, through efforts to make the
rate of decarbonisation compatible with the realisation of existing fixed. . .capital” (Carton,
2019, p. 762). Such promises of a ‘zero carbon’ future reinforces hegemonic socioecological
relations that underpin current political economic processes and reproduces them while giving
an impression of normality.
In the context of this thesis, it is then important to consider how the peat restoration project by
the PRA and forest fire policy in general are part of a socioecological fix—as well as a
negative emission technology (McLaren, Tyfield, Willis, Szerszynski, & Markusson, 2019),
meaning they attempt to ‘fix’ the annual forest and wildfires problem but effectively offset
emissions for the continuation of certain economic sectors. Although it is not an infrastructure
in the typical sense, the restoration of peatlands provides safety and sustainability to the
environment on which the agricultural industry operates, which includes the palm oil and
timber industry. Furthermore, the coalition of only non-private actors such as government
agencies, NGOs, and universities reflects the disinterest of private companies to fund this
project, characteristic of a spatial fix described earlier. At the same time, peat restoration
reinforces political legitimacy for the continuation of the palm oil industry and plantation
regimes since the fires’ main problem is generally framed so that it stops at the level of dry
peat thus rewetting and restoring them is enough as an intervention. Peat restoration as part of
a socioecological fix will be explored more deeply in the discussion chapter.
3.1.4 Intellectual labor in the production of nature
Production is made possible through acts of labor, but two divisions of labor are of interest
here: manual and intellectual labor. The labor discussed in Uneven Development often refers
to labor more in general than particular – abstract rather than embodied. Although Smith
(2008) touched upon the different kinds of laboring that takes place within the production of
nature, he later recognized the lack of a socially and culturally textured analysis of labor
(Smith, 2011). Ekers and Loftus (2013) highlighted this problematic and turned to the works
of Gramsci to reinforce and revitalize the production of nature thesis.
One particularly important point raised by Ekers and Loftus (2013) is the issue of the
universalizing nature of labor analyses in history where it is oftens abstract and disembodied,
emerging from a point of departure of a white working-class man (Rose, 1997). This becomes
extremely relevant when discussing the production of nature in countries of the Global South
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where the social and cultural framework of laborers do not fit that of the Western proletariat.
Citing the works of the “Berkeley School of political ecology”, Ekers and Loftus (2013) go on
to demonstrate the fruitful scholarship of agrarian production in terms of the (continually)
differentiated labor force and the ensuing production of nature. Indeed, temporal gaps
between capital investments and crop harvests have engendered marginalized labor forces
through specific credit and financialization regimes; additionally, the formation of seasonal
and migrant workforces due to biophysical constraints of crops (i.e. harvest periods) exhibit
class and racial relations of labor that perform the agricultural work. Ekers and Loftus’ article
(2013) hinges on a “Gramscian turn” in which Gramsci’s absolute historicism provides a
window to a more nuanced and historicized understanding of the conditions of labor, nature,
and their relationship with each other in the production process, general or particular.
At the same time, other forms of labor beside manual labor are equally worth investigating.
Smith (2008) highlighted the development of the division of labor into manual and mental
alongside the development of production for exchange, and it was in Smith (1998) he was
explicit about extending the production of nature thesis towards “imaginative work”, among
others. Through Gramsci, Ekers and Loftus (2013) argue that the production of nature can and
should be more open to the subjects and organization of labor and, more importantly for this
thesis, different forms of labor – Gramsci (1971) expresses his awareness of the complex
ways humans enter relations with nature and pointed to “philosophical knowledge,” and not
just manual labor. Elsewhere, Sohn-Rethel stresses the significance of contingent forms of
mental labor and its direct relationship with material society: “the socially necessary forms of
thinking of an epoch are those in conformity with the socially synthetic functions of that
epoch” (Sohn-Rethel, 1978, p. 5).
All this points to the importance of intellectual labor in analyzing relationships between
humans and nature, in this case, the production of nature. The definition of intellectual labor
is difficult to underpin; indeed, the very act of laboring includes both the manual and
intellectual faculties of the body. Maurizio Lazzarato’s immaterial labor (1996) deals with
more creative work and the complexity of the organization of work in advanced capitalist
society in general. Raewyn Connell and June Crawford (2007) employs a more workable
definition of intellectual labor: they are workers whose “tools are symbolic techniques; the
objects of labour are cultural materials; and the outcomes are transformed cultural materials”
(Connell & Crawford, 2007, p. 188). Davide Bates (2007b), on the other hand, frames
43
intellectuals as the possessors of intellectual labor, and uses the academic as an example of
the modern intellectual (2007a).
Some scholars such as Nico Poulantzas (1973) argue that intellectuals, hence intellectual
labor, are not ‘workers’ in an orthodox Marxist view. The argument is that they should be
characterized according to their location relative to the superstructure and not to the economic
base i.e. the realm of production. In Marxist theory, the economic base, consisting of the
means of production and relations of production, shapes the superstructure (i.e. social
structures such as culture, ideology, education, science, etc), which in turn maintain the
generally dominant economic base (Figure 5). That is, intellectual labor is unproductive in
the traditional Marxist sense. Bates (2007a) contests this notion by adopting the arguments of
Erik Olin Wright, that, in terms of class, intellectual laborers’ commodification and
“subjection to the wage-labour relation. . .opens up academic labour to potential processes of
exploitation” (Bates, 2007a, p. 181) and, more importantly, he argues that the sale of labor
power to private capital or the capitalist state effectively situates them in the same
‘productive’ class as the proletariat. Intellectual labor, viewed in this way, is indeed
productive and participate in the production process (of nature).
Figure 5. Base and superstructure (Wikipedia, retrieved 2019)
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So far, I have discussed the central thesis of the production of nature, the production of
nature-as-geographical-space, the role labor plays in the production process of nature, and the
concrete and multitudinous forms of labor, intellectual labor specifically. As intellectual
laborers today work in different production processes hence produce nature differently, we
will look at how they, as experts who work within and/or for the state apparatus, produce
nature through the labor of writing documents.
3.2 Intellectual laborers and experts
3.2.1 Defining experts and intellectual labor
At first glance experts are relatively straightforward: they are people with a specific set of
skills and knowledge to handle a particular problem – such experts are often invited to share
their opinion to the general public and public or private institutions. However, it is important
to unpack and delimit the definition of experts in order to understand them and their role
better, particularly in regard to the topic of this thesis. Who counts as an expert? To what
extent do their expertise influence public policy, institutions, and indeed reality? Thus, this
section will explore several definitions of experts and how these definitions are relevant to the
policymaking infrastructure before settling into the final definition of experts.
It has been stated previously that I have chosen to use the words expert and intellectual
interchangeably. This is because, in the context of state environmental governance in
Indonesia, experts holding high-level positions within state institutions consistently engage in
intellectual labor and are often known to the public (to some extent), whereas experts from
NGOs, grassroots organizations, or “public intellectuals” are generally less involved in
environmental governance, at least in the national scale. Furthermore, these high-ranking civil
servants often have graduate and even doctoral degrees, reinforcing their status as someone
with the necessary knowledge and experience.
David Bates (2007b) made a distinction between definitions of intellectuals: they can be
defined through a political perspective and a sociological one. The former points to those
people with knowledge who engage in public politics and intervene and participate within the
political arena. The sociological definition refers to a particular division of labor:
“Intellectuals may thus be understood as those who are located on the mental (and hence
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intellectual) side of the mental/manual division of labour. Put bluntly, intellectuals are
intellectuals because they engage in intellectual work” (Bates, 2007b, p. 6). In other words,
intellectuals enter the wage-labor relationship in order to think and communicate the products
of their thoughts. State institution experts can, to a degree, fit both definitions of intellectuals.
There is a tendency in modern capitalist societies5 for intellectual labor to become
increasingly important where the growth of capitalism necessitates the deskilling of workers
whose intellectual capacity are displaced and replaced by “new concentrations of skills that
constitute intellectual labor” (“Intellectual Labour,” n.d.) such as managers who are required
by capitalists to control how labor is organized (i.e. the detailed division of labor) in order to
maximize profits or surplus value (Braverman, 1998). This line of reasoning, however, may
lead to the assertion that intellectuals are forming their own class, separated from the working
class due to their continued deskilling. Nevertheless, Bates (2007b) had previously provided
us with a sociological definition of intellectual labor that counters this notion: “we could
argue that to be an intellectual is the function of a specific location in a division of labour,
whilst at the same time insisting that there is not one type of intellectual” (Bates, 2007b, p. 8).
Gramsci’s vast work on intellectuals is relevant here; according to him, intellectuals do not
form their own class, rather, “each class has their own intellectuals” (Gramsci in Thomas,
2007, p. 74). Intellectuals can be organized vertically along the class hierarchy, and,
according to Peter Thomas, “this vertical relation extends across the (artificial) division
between political society and civil society, so that there is a closer relation between
intellectuals of the same class performing seemingly distinct functions” (Thomas, 2007, p.
75). Thus, intellectual labor done by experts are quite different than that done by intellectual
workers when we consider the class difference between the worker and the expert. Indeed,
Thomas argues that “Gramsci implicitly suggests that the intellectual should not be
specifically characterised by intellectual labour, but by the position of this intellectual labour
in determinant social relations” (Thomas, 2007, p. 83). Therefore, it can be argued that the
“intellectual laborer” cannot be conflated with the “intellectual worker” in every aspect –
although the intellectual laborer comprise the intellectual worker. However, Gramsci also put
forward a critical aspect of intellectuals; they organize “the social hegemony of a group and
its domination at the level of the state” (Gramsci in Thomas, 2007, p. 73). Here he puts
forward the concept of the state, or rather “integral state,” which is more than the typical
5 Although this is also true for any modern society (“Intellectual Labour,” n.d.)
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government institution or any formal state apparatus, for that matter. Instead, it comprises
both civil society and political society that forms a “dialectical unity” and is the “terrain upon
which social classes compete for social and political leadership or hegemony over other social
classes; a hegemony guaranteed . . . by capture of the legal monopoly of violence embodied in
the institutions of political society” (Thomas, 2007, p. 73). For Gramsci, intellectuals play an
important role in establishing and maintaining hegemony, social or otherwise.
Elsewhere, Connell and Crawford (2007) sheds some light on the intellectual labor process,
though their argument relates less to the expert than the intellectual worker mentioned
previously. Nevertheless, they raise an interesting point regarding intellectual labor in relation
to institutions, in that they possess a social asset which is the "shared, organized knowledge
and technique. . . . [and is] realized organizationally. Struggles to control or influence the
organizations concerned are therefore struggles over the future of intellectual production
itself" (Connell & Crawford, 2007, p. 203). This echoes what Gramsci discussed regarding
intellectuals and hegemony. Similarly, Castree (Castree, 2001a) argues that scientists are
“institutionally embedded,” when discussing their role in the production of nature, meaning
that their activities are heavily influenced by the institutions for which they are working
(paraphrasing Busch, Lacy, Burkhardt, and Lacy [1991]:
Research activities are indelibly influenced by the aims and objectives of the
institutions they work for. This is not to say that scientists’ activities and discoveries
are wholly determined according to their employer’s wishes, but it is to say that
dynamic, two-way (or dialectical) relation exists in which scientific research both
conditions and is conditioned by the institutions it is embedded in. (Castree, 2001a, p.
195)
Experts can also be identified with respect to their relationships with others, i.e. their
connection to a network(s) of other experts and their recognition of each other. The concept of
epistemic communities is relevant here, which refers to a community of professionals whose
job is to produce knowledge regarding a certain issue, generally as a process of public policy
(Dunlop, 2013). Originally popularized by Peter Haas (1992) when studying transnational
experts and international policy, epistemic communities can be located at any level of
government (Dunlop, 2013, p. 233). Haas (Haas, 1992) states that epistemic communities
share (1) a set of normative and principled beliefs, which forms their overall rationale; (2)
causal beliefs, in regards to their ontological and epistemological assumptions; (3) shared
notions of validity, or the “internally defined criteria for weighing and validating knowledge
in the domain of their expertise.” Additionally, they also have (4) a common policy
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enterprise, which is the “usual methods” attached to certain problems. Such a network is
instrumental in establishing legitimacy for policy outcomes: “belonging to an epistemic
community enables experts to make authoritative and legitimate claims on relevant political
issues” (Góra, Holst, and Warat, 2018). Hudalah, Winarso, and Woltjer (2010) presented a
similar network through an Indonesian case, one that, apart from (academic) experts, consists
of politicians, journalists, and environmental activists. This network was successful in
preventing a controversial road development project in the North Bandung Area, a river basin
with low levels of urbanization in the city of Bandung.
Gora et al., (2018) also argue that experts can be and are exposed to “confirmation biases,”
where they would look for evidence that only support their own argument; as well as “reason-
based choice” biases, where the option with the most easily gathered reason or justification is
chosen. Biases within epistemic communities is similar to Jenny Goldstein’s (2016b)
divergent expertise, which she defines as “competing knowledge claims . . . marshaled to
generate scientific ambiguity” (Goldstein, 2016b, p. 766). Her concept of divergent expertise
was in relation to land suitability analyses pertaining peatland development in the context of
oil palm expansion. Although mainstream scientific discourses had been adamant on the role
of peatland development in generating carbon emissions, divergent expertise affiliated with
the oil palm industry and state institutions have been able to produce alternative knowledge
bases “to show that carbon emissions can be reduced through land management practices.”
The science behind this relies, for example, on peatland depth and its suitability for oil palm
plantations, where divergent experts claim that peatland of any depth is suitable for
plantations. One of the ways this kind of science is made relevant, Goldstein argues, is
through publishing to Indonesian language journals as well as non-peer-reviewed journals,
which the Indonesia’s Oil Palm Association took advantage of: “These publication outlets
nevertheless enable industry-aligned scientists to publicly publish their findings and provide
officials with citable data to reference so they can strategically support their claims”
(Goldstein, 2016b, p. 763).
In general, Indonesian public policy experts play different roles depending on the scale of
governance. Regional and local governments bring in private consultants more often,
outsourcing a great deal of the work (McLeod & Harun, 2014), of which Indonesia has a
history (Li, 2011; Simarmata, Dimastanto, Santoso, & Kalsuma, 2014; Timothy, 1999). The
national government, on the other hand, is relatively more competent in general and does not
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outsource important projects that require high-level decision-making to external experts or
consultants as most of the high-ranking officials have graduate degrees and PhDs.
3.3 The transformative role of documents
3.3.1 Documents in the development sector
In the field of international development, workers are often assigned to a multitude of tasks
from arranging stakeholder meetings, holding workshops, and negotiating with authorities and
other parties. But it is writing documents that development workers do the most, as Bengt
Karlsson (2013) argues. According to him, there are six features that make up development
writing and documents: (1) institutional ownership, (2) multiple authorship, (3) impersonal
style, (4) terminology, (5) communicable simplifications, and (6) temporality.
Institutional ownership of a document refers to the shared ownership of the document and its
contents, thus it is not attributed to a single author or a number of authors. Even if the
document was written by a limited number of writers, with the help of assistants and
consultants, it still “belongs” to the institution that petitioned it who often are international
organizations, government agencies, or non-profits. Therefore, it is the affiliation with such an
institution that gives the document legitimacy and meaning.
The multiple authorship of a document is a quite unique feature within development writing.
As an author(s) write a document, its contents often are composed of parts from a previous
version of the document which is still valid for the purposes of the current documents. Self-
plagiarism as known to academia does not apply in this case (Karlsson, 2013). Furthermore,
once a draft is made, the document is handed for review to different parties and relevant
persons and there the document will undergo further changes according to the latest
development trend, even though these other parties will not be considered as the official
authors of the document.
A prominent feature in development documents is the impersonal style of the writing. In
contrast to what was discussed by Asdal (2015), the neutral and impersonal style adopted
within development documents enables multiple parties to agree on a common subject and
avoid conflict which, in some places, parties are wont to do. This “modality of speaking from
nowhere in particular” provides a platform for dialogue (Asdal, 2015).
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Terminology in development writing is also crucial since it is keywords that are used to
identify the contents of a document. Terms such as community-based disaster risk
management (known as its acronym CBDRM), participatory planning, and resilience are
signifiers for donors and governments to tell whether or not the document is in line with the
current objective of the project.
One thing policymakers and politicians often look for in a development document is the
executive summary so as to grasp quickly what the document is proposing. Not only that, it
also useful for communicating the aims and justification of a project to the public. These
communicable simplifications are important in development writing to secure support, and
usually funding, from relevant parties. The real matter of problem is, however, more complex
but it is only to development workers does this complexity shows itself.
Finally, what Karlsson (2013) meant by temporality is two things: the speed at which readers
consume the contents of a document thus more work is done in certain parts of the documents
such as the executive summary, conclusion, and appendices; and the speed at which the
documents are written following the demands of institutions. The speedy nature of the
production and consumption of documents seems to characterize development documents
very well.
Evidently, these features demonstrate the properties of a development document as a result of
process of textual production. In regards to the actual purpose of documents, Karlsson (2013)
argues that it is less about the contents than the process of its production. He illustrates how
the textual production in development is beyond just producing documents but that the
process itself lends to the creation of new development networks and relations. Images of
government agents and indigenous representatives holding a document agreeing upon
indigenous rights, for example, may come to mind – a new relationship between indigenous
people and the state is formed. Thus, documents can present themselves as the culmination of
a process of discussion, consultation, and negotiation.
Elsewhere, Hull’s (2012) work on the materiality of documents as graphical artifacts in the
context of paper documents in Islamabad echoes this sentiment:
Artifacts precipitate and graphically represent (partially) the formation of shifting
networks and groups of functionaries and clients. When these social organizations
compete with rather than converge with formal bureaucratic divisions, such artifacts
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(rather than the formal organizational entities) are the effective agents of bureaucratic
actions shaping the built environment. (Hull, 2012, p. 22)
3.3.2 “Modifying work,” or the labor of modification
In the context of environmental governance and development, indeed, in many aspects of
state governance, one of the ways in which intellectual laborers work is by writing
documents. This takes the form of policy documents, which may then become incorporated
into laws as appendices or a separate entity to which politicians and policymakers refer. It is
through writing and modifying their writing that intellectual laborers shape reality and thus
also nature. In this section I will use intellectual laborers and experts interchangeably.
Kristin Asdal (2015) argue that documents have a transformative capacity and take part in
shaping reality just as much as they describe and document it. Of course, this notion is not
new, Michel Foucault’s works on power relations expressed through language, written or
otherwise, is an established literature. Asdal’s argument, however, attempts to draw this and
actor-network theory (Latour, 1996) together, and centers around the concept of ‘issue’ which
documents contain, produce, and project onto the world: “we should not be satisfied with the
fact that something becomes or is an issue. We need to analyze carefully both how issues
emerge in the first place, and then what kind of issue and with which effect for the relevant
nature object or issue” (Asdal, 2015). Documents, she argues, are instrumental in determining
how issues develop and used in political processes. This process is what she calls modifying
work, as in the labor of modifying documents by, in this case, experts or intellectual laborers.
Here I will attempt to discuss a series of modifying work presented in Asdal (2015) in a rather
abstract fashion but it has to be said that they are particular to her analysis on two documents:
a letter written in 1947 by a veterinarian in Årdal, Norway about an emerging illness plaguing
the animals after a number of aluminum factories were built nearby a few years prior; and a
document by the Smoke Damage Committee that recommended measures to be taken in
regard to the pollution taking place.
Modification work is possible because of documents’ capacity to modify and transform.
Asdal (2015) contests the idea that a particular issue exists on its own and documents merely
describe that issue. Rather, an issue is malleable and in the context of her study, indeed in the
context of this paper as well, documents modify, transform, and establish that issue with such
confidence that it is accepted as the thing to be concerned about. The letter written by the
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veterinarian, sent to the chief veterinary officer in the Ministry of Agriculture, documented
his journey in discovering the symptoms suffered by farm animals and concluded that the
illness was caused by fluoride poisoning from the nearby factories. Years later, however, the
Smoke Damage Committee was formed and produced a document that determined the kinds
of measures needed to be taken in order to control industrial pollution. It was the properties of
each document that dictate the relevance of the issue each of them brought up. While the letter
was written by a lone veterinarian and his exchanges with colleagues in a local context, quite
personal, and clear in identifying the victims – the policy document was a result of expert
discussions within the state apparatus and was national in scale, neutral and impersonal, and
obscured who the victims are: “this means that the report enacts both weight (the local is
made integral to the national, thus made to increase both in size and significance) and
trustworthiness (there is good reason to believe that what the report states is true)” (Asdal,
2015). The issue that was accepted was, in the end, the one proposed in the report; as two
documents attempt to transform an issue, only one emerge as the winner.
Issues, thus, are modified and transformed through a particular set of textual labor:
1. Modifying work can turn controversies into an everyday affair. Asdal took note of
how some passages normalized the presence of air pollution attributing it to a
ubiquitous feature of industrialization, which Norway was undergoing at the time. In
contrast with the veterinarian’s letter, the report was very implicit in defining the
losers and the winners. A controversy such as air pollution was deemed detrimental to
the health of farm animals within a locality, according to the veterinarian’s letter, the
victims were not potentialities but real living creatures; but the expert report
considered the pollution almost as a necessity, even part of a positive political
industrialization project, the victims are disembodied and put into a general category
and the problem becomes deterritorialized.
2. Modifying work are also able to re-time and re-locate the issue, that is, in this case,
the issue was handled not after the damage was done, but before the production
process even begins. Preventive measures thus became the central proposal
recommended within the expert report. At the same time, as previously mentioned, the
issue was no longer an issue of the local but a matter of the national, where much
more diverse interests, particularly industrial interests, converge and come into
conflict with each other. The focus of the issue, as established by the report, has
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become less about compensating and ameliorating the local than preventing and
mitigating externalizations of the national.
3. Modifying work turns (industry) objects into the collective good. The expert
report’s recommendation in regard to the pollution problem was to establish a
licensing scheme which industries must follow in order to mitigate any negative
environmental externalities. This way, before a location was decided to be a site of
industrial production, it is first assessed under certain guidelines and both industry and
non-industry actors will therefore benefit. Asdal (2015) argued, however, that, before
this scheme was come to, older industry objects were propped up as a collective
institution: that they provided jobs, that have been an establishment for decades, and
that they produce metals that the average public do not know their purpose but will
just have to trust its usefulness. This results in the new scheme to be only applicable to
new industrial projects while older ones are subject to it only in the event that they
decide to expand current establishments: “‘Industry’ was already an object that carried
size and weight, and so it was made to remain” (Asdal, 2015)a.
4. Modifying work can move the issue from stakeholders to issue-experts. At first,
Asdal (2015) started off with the veterinarian’s letter in which the victims, losers, and
disadvantaged was made explicit; it was clear who had a stake in this issue. The expert
report, however, was written by certain issue-experts, translated to Norwegian as
sakkyndige, where the specific meaning this word brings is that of technical and
practical knowledge about the issue, not just scientific: “It is therefore tempting to
read the actual report as yet another example of ‘scientification’ of a problem: An
initially social and political problem is renegotiated, modified, and delimited to a
scientific issue”(Asdal, 2015). This has allowed for experts of industry, among others,
to be part of the committee and inform the way the report was written, while other
stakeholders in the issue become obscured and generalized into the general public; the
issue is “made to belong to a specific set of actors” (Asdal, 2015).
5. Modifying work can detach actors from issues. In the expert report, the victims and
the losers of the pollution issue were defined as the “affected parties” and the Smoke
Damage Committee came to the conclusion that it was to the affected parties’ best
interest that a governmental expert body was formed for them to deliver complaints
which will be handled properly. At the same time, as we have previously seen,
industry actors are part of the Smoke Damage Committee itself and “it was not
53
deemed to be problematic that industry was given the position as both polluter and
expert” (Asdal, 2015). The “affected parties” i.e. the local people, animals, and
environment thus were detached from the whole issue altogether and has little to say
about the direction in which pollution measures should be taken.
6. Finally, Asdal goes on to discuss how modifying work contribute to the emergence of
new governable objects, naming, and intervening. Indeed, the licensing scheme that
was produced by the expert committee was created to define, quantify, and govern or
control pollutants in the name of intervention. What was once invisible, mysterious,
and unnamed become a reality and part of the public consciousness. An important part
of this process is also how the expert document itself is made relevant and existent:
[T]he state is not confined to one place or one distinct and easily delineated
machinery, but rather operates through various means of indirect government
that extend far beyond what we have conventionally associated it with. Such
indirect forms of government or technologies of politics help produce the very
objects available for political intervention.
It is therefore worth noting how nature objects are being re-presented,
made visible, and realized in the expert committee’s report: They are thus
given an existence and a presence that they had not had before – vis-à-vis a
political machinery. (Asdal, 2015, p. 22)
Similarly, Morgan Robertson (2006) argues that some commodities such as the
wetland ecosystem services example he used, are articulated through “forums of
articulation” into a nature that “capital can see”. As capital requires more services
extracted from a certain ecosystem, the language used in science are increasingly
unable to produce stable data to keep up with capital’s needs of differentiated services.
Also, as ecosystems continue to be divided up into distinct services to put in the
marketplace, undifferentiated commodities like “wetland credits” (here we can draw
parallels with carbon credits) ignore a lot of ecological information. Thus, the naming
and articulation of nature objects are heavily dependent on the logic of the dominant
structure, in this case capital or the (capitalist) state.
Asdal was interested in how words and things go together, that is, how modifying work is the
ordering of words and things in the material world. This was done through her use of the
concept of “issue”. She cites the recent works within science and technology studies regarding
issues, how objects and things are being contested and questioned and therefore “broken
open.” However, she has demonstrated that the production of issues may as well be the
54
closing down of an object or thing i.e. becoming a non-issue, and involves it “being
transformed into an issue implied becoming normalized, managed, and ‘taken care of’”
(Asdal, 2015, p. 87). In the context of modern governance, it is documents that becomes the
site in which issues are modified and transformed through modifying work.
In the next section, I will expand on Asdal’s practice-oriented approach in order to
operationalize her methodology for this thesis.
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4 Methodology
4.1 Assumptions and theoretical implications
4.1.1 Positionality and bias
It is imperative that I declare my bias and position myself as a researcher in relation to my
data and overall thesis. This is so as not to entertain some idea of ‘objectivity’ or replicability
(Winchester & Rofe, 2016). Thus, the ‘hunches’ that I developed throughout my conducting
this research changed as I understood the topic in more in detail. As an Indonesian national, I
was already familiar with the culture and way of thinking of my interviewees and have an
existing idea of how policy documents are produced. The fieldwork was also conducted with
funding provided by the Department of Human Geography at the University of Oslo.
4.1.2 Key assumptions
The design of this research changed several times during the writing of this thesis. Prior to the
fieldwork, I set out to investigate the forest fires in Indonesia through a multi-scalar
understanding, with the hope of finding different views and behaviors toward the fires and
different social and political scales. With this in mind, I conducted my fieldwork by
interviewing government bureaucrats at the city, provincial, and national levels and planned
to interview villagers and farmers who live close to recent fire locations and who are
negatively affected. Partly through interviewing government officials (and after having to
reschedule some interviews which shortened the available fieldwork time), I came to realize
that the original scope of my research was too broad and would take much more time and
(human) resources to accomplish. On top of that, I noticed the level of dependency each
government body had with each other not only horizontally but also vertically in terms of fire-
related policies, with national government bodies being the initiators of such policies. After
an interviewee from the NDPA handed me a document containing a multi-ministerial effort
on curbing forest fires, which he felt represented the GoI’s most recent and significant
intervention on the issue, I began to take an interest in policy documents and its significance
in setting the stage as well as guide national and local forest fire policy.
56
Documents, then, became a primary focus in my research agenda. The interviews I conducted
are still important parts of the data and will help “to fill a gap in knowledge that other
methods. . .are unable to bridge efficaciously” (Dunn, 2016, p. 150). Interviews are also
helpful in revealing what is ‘outside’ of the documents i.e. the context in which the
documents exist.
4.2 Data collection and fieldwork
4.2.1 Semi-structured Interviews
The fieldwork was conducted between July 17-August 21 2018 and took place in Jakarta and
Pontianak, West Kalimantan. The first phase involved interviewing government agencies in
Pontianak first, both city-level and provincial level agencies. The idea behind this was to
establish the situation at the local scale and then explore the issue at the national scale, during
the second phase in Jakarta.
The interview used in the thesis consists of semi-structured interviews and documents in soft
copies. The interviews consisted of a total of 8 open-ended questions with 6 primary
questions and 2 secondary questions. Dunn describes primary questions as “opening
questions used to initiate discussion on a new theme or topic. . . . [while secondary questions
as] prompts that encourage the informant to follow up or expand on an issue already
discussed” (Dunn, 2016, p. 154). Further secondary questions were asked without prior
planning, depending on the topic being discussed. The opening question is a “storytelling”
type of question that follows a “funnel structure” (Dunn, 2016) which allows the interviewee
to tell a story or freely talk and at the same time establish a common ground between the
interviewer and the interviewee. I found this to be particularly useful in exploring some
aspects of the topic that I was not aware beforehand.
The list of questions:
1. To your knowledge, what is the history of forest and land fires in Indonesia?
2. What about smoke haze?
3. What is your opinion on smoke haze that originate from concession areas owned by
foreign companies (Malaysia and Singapore)?
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4. What is your and your organization’s role in managing haze resulting from forest and
land fires?
5. What has been done? What is being done? (Mitigation, adaptation?)
6. What is the reasoning behind that policy?
7. (What was the response like from local governments?)
8. In your opinion, what is the best solution?
The selection process for interviewees is through purposive sampling (Stratford and
Bradshaw, 2016) which combines some of the different strategies within purposive sampling.
Typical case sampling selects interviewees that is normally associated with the topic
(Interviewees 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13); snowball sampling, in which participants were
chosen based on advice of previous interviewees (Interviewees 3, 4); and opportunistic
sampling which is to “follow new leads during fieldwork” (Stratford & Bradshaw, 2016, p.
124).
Participants were first contacted via SMS or WhatsApp to check their availability and after
the interview, the interviewee is then asked to provide participants from other related agency
or organization and their contact details, which fortunately tends to be a relatively high-
ranking official. This way unnecessary bureaucratic ‘red tapes’ can be bypassed since an
‘endorsement’ was given by the previous participant, indicating that their allocating time for
an interview is not a waste of time for the interviewee. On average, the interviews were
approximately one hour long
The list of interviewees is as follows:
Table 1. List of interviewees
Organization
Interviewee 1 Environment Agency – City of Pontianak, West Kalimantan Province
Interviewee 2 Environment Agency – City of Pontianak, West Kalimantan Province
Interviewee 3 Residential Housing, Residential Areas, and Environment Agency – West
Kalimantan Province
Interviewee 4 Regional Planning Agency – West Kalimantan Province
Interviewee 5 Natural Resources Conservation Center – West Kalimantan Province
Interviewee 6 Regional Disaster Management Agency – West Kalimantan Province
Interviewee 7 Forestry Agency – West Kalimantan Province
Interviewee 8 National Disaster Management Agency
Interviewee 9 National Development Planning Agency
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Interviewee 10 Peat Restoration Agency
Interviewee 11 Ministry of Environment and Forestry
Interviewee 12 Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics Agency
Interviewee 13 National Development Planning Agency
4.2.2 Acquiring documents
All the documents being analyzed are publicly available online. The PRA’s Strategic Plan is
available on their website, the NDC was acquired from UNFCCC’s NDC Registry, and the
ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Pollution was acquired from the ASEAN website. A
physical copy of the Grand Design was acquired during an interview with a representative
from the NDPA, although a virtual copy is also available online.
4.3 Practice-oriented document analysis
The features and capabilities of documents mentioned previously demonstrate how documents
can and should be regarded as more than mere text. Indeed, as exemplified by the formation
of the expert committee in the development of certain issues in Asdal (2015), documents are
parts, and in turn, form parts of sociopolitical processes. Following Reinertsen, Bjørkdahl,
and McNeill (2017) along with Reinertsen’s video lecture (Institutt Sosiologi og
Samfunnsgeografi, 2019), Asdal’s practice-oriented approach on documents can be conducted
through three dimensions: documents as text, documents as process, and documents as
context. Analyzing documents through these three aspects allows for a more comprehensive
understanding of how documents play a role in public policy as well as the practices
surrounding the production and use of documents. Table 1 showcases the different aspects of
documents to analyze in practice-oriented document analysis based on a video lecture by
Reinertsen (Institutt Sosiologi og Samfunnsgeografi, 2019).
Documents as text
Analyzing documents through its text involve looking at who the author or authors are
(whether that is relevant at all), who the audience is, who/what is the subject/object, what is
the style of the writing, how is the narrative structured, what is being omitted, and how does it
persuade to a certain end. Discourse and content analysis are perhaps often seen as the typical
method for this, but such analyses often glance over the materiality of documents and only
59
focus on self-contained internal logics, leaving out important details on how documents
materially affect the real and concrete, hence the need for a practice-oriented approach.
Documents as process
Investigating documents as products of a (political) process is crucial in revealing important
aspects of the wider problem or issue in question. Several facets of this process include:
production and circulation of a document among relevant parties, its history, its future
trajectory, how it is read/not read, the multiple versions of a document, the chain of
documents before and after it, and the degree of controversy or consensus in a document’s
production. By analyzing the features of a document’s process, especially within state
institutions, the changing nature of an issue becomes visible and questions the politically-
charged inclusion/exclusion of certain things in the document.
Documents as context
It is also important to consider documents as part of the wider sociopolitical context upon
which things happen. Documents can form parts of daily routines and (information)
infrastructures, its “backstage” production can differ from its “frontstage” presentation
(Hilgartner, 2000), bringing into question the management of these “stages.” Additionally,
through different mechanisms, documents are also given authority, and documents are crucial
in shaping issues as the public knows it and how that, in turn, affect real-world phenomena.
Viewed in this way, documents become the backdrop of bureaucratical behavior and may lead
to new processes of decision-making.
Table 2. Dimensions of practice-oriented document analysis (Institutt Sosiologi og
Samfunnsgeografi, 2019)
Document as text Document as process Document as context
Author Production / circulation Daily life, routine work
Reader / audience History Information infrastructure
Subject / object Trajectory Frontstage / backstage
Genre / style / form Reading / non-reading Stage management
Narrative structure Multiple versions Authority of procedure
Omissions Chains of documents Issue formation
Efforts at persuasion Controversy / consensus Real-world effects
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However, depending on their relevance to the specific document, some aspects will not be
included in the document’s respective analysis.
Table 3. Modified tools for practice-oriented document analysis
Aspects Questions
Document as text
Author Who are involved in the production of the document?
Reader / audience Who is the intended reader?
Subject / object Who/what is framed as the subject and who/what is the object?
Narrative structure How is the narrative structured? What story is being told?
Omissions What have been omitted?
Document as process
Production / circulation What was the production process like? How was/is it being
circulated?
History What is the history of the topic of the document?
Trajectory What is the document’s trajectory?
Chains of documents What other documents are related to the current document?
How are they relevant?
Controversy / consensus Was the document’s production process controversial?
Document as context
Daily life, routine work How has the document been adopted to routine
work/procedures?
Information infrastructure How has the document been coopted into the general
information infrastructure?
Authority of procedure How did the document become authoritative?
Issue formation What issues have been formed by the documents?
Real-world effects How did the document contribute to real-world changes?
The documents I will be analyzing are as follows:
1. [SP] Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan 2016-2020
The SP is a document that presents strategic programs proposed by the PRA for a 5-year
duration and acts as a guideline for peat restoration activities at the national scale. The
document includes mapping out the focus areas for restoration and “indicatively cover the
types, objectives, performance indicators, performance targets, and performance target
locations of the activities, as well as the illustration of the restoration processes or stages,
input component in reaching the output” (BRG, 2017, 45).
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It appears that there are two editions of the document: the first (SP1) was released in
November 2016 and, at the time of retrieval (April 2019), was the document that was
downloadable on the PRA’s website. The second edition (SP2) seems to be published
sometime in early 2017 and was available in both English and Indonesian. The English
version replaced the first edition on the PRA’s website when I visited it on November 2019,
while the Indonesian version was retrieved through Google searching that led to the PRA’s
website through a ‘backdoor’ as a .pdf file but could not be found through manually exploring
the website. The English SP presented on the website, however, had the thumbnail of the
Indonesian first edition of the document, as seen in Figure 6.
Figure 6. The PRA website with the downloadable second edition of the document with a
thumbnail of the first edition (BRG Indonesia, n.d.)
2. [GD] Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires
2017-2019
As its title suggest, the GD is a document that outlines the national governments attempt to
mitigate fires. It outlines academic analyses of the direct and underlying causes of the fires
and come up with the appropriate responses. Its stated objectives are: (1) significantly reduce
fires from year to year; (2) improving coordination and harmonization between ministries and
government agencies, both central and regional, including synchronizing programs and
budgets; and (3) increase the participation of the private sector and the community in fire
prevention in a planned and systematic manner.
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3. [NDC] Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution
Much like NDC of other countries, Indonesia’s NDC outlines the country’s commitment to
reduce emissions. It includes an unconditional reduction and a conditional reduction:
Indonesia has voluntarily committed to reduce unconditionally 26% of its greenhouse
gases against the business as usual scenario by the year 2020.
Indonesia could increase its contribution up to 41% reduction of emissions by
2030, subject to availability of international support for finance, technology transfer
and development and capacity building. (NDC, 2016, p. 7)
4. [ATHP] ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution
The ATHP is an agreement signed by all ASEAN member states in order to combat
transboundary haze that stems from forest and land fires that occur in the region annually,
with Indonesia being the most regular source.
The objective of this Agreement is to prevent and monitor transboundary haze
pollution as a result of land and/or forest fires which should be mitigated, through
concerted national efforts and intensified regional and international co-operation. This
should be pursued in the overall context of sustainable development and in accordance
with the provisions of this Agreement. (ATHP, 2002, p. 4)
4.4 Shortcomings and ethical considerations
The interviews were conducted without the interviewees having to sign a confidentiality
agreement. Although I see this as a weakness in the overall methodology, this is also due to a
number of considerations. Firstly, the culture of data collection is taken into account.
Depending on the bureaucrat or government official, some are more comfortable allocating
their time for interviews when approached informally i.e. contacted personally via SMS or
WhatsApp. Formal introductory documents that are usually required to be processed
internally before any appointment is made can sometimes get stuck in administration and only
after weeks after the initial request will they provide an interview opportunity. This culture of
informality is taken into account throughout the whole fieldwork.
Secondly, from my previous experience in conducting interviews for research, interviewees
are more open when they feel that there is less at stake, especially concerning sensitive issues
such as forest fires and the palm oil industry. The intention was to make the interview as
informal for the interviewee as possible. This means that confidential agreements are seen as
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intimidating and overly formal and there is a risk of them withholding information. Signing
such an agreement would put them under a sense of surveillance despite the very nature of a
confidentiality agreement. This is especially crucial considering the timeframe of the
fieldwork of July 2018 when Indonesia was hosting the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and
Palembang and considerable attention was paid in preventing any fire incidents during the
event. Upholding the image of Indonesia being free of fires after the amount of efforts it
showed to curb them was imperative.
Finally, no personal or sensitive data was requested during the interviews; most of the
information was regarding institutional policies and programs. Additionally, the names of the
interviewees will not be mentioned and the audio recordings will be destroyed after the
completion of the research.
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5 Document analysis
5.1 Documents as text
5.1.1 Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan as text
The SP was authored by the PRA staff but does not name any specific individuals.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, there are two editions of the SP document. This points
to some questionable issues of transparency. Indeed, the content of the document between
editions has marked differences. For example, strategies on involving concession permit
holders are much more sophisticated in SP2 than SP1; behavioral tendencies of
concessionaires were carefully analyzed in SP2 and provided insight for the reader on the
challenges and opportunities for potential partnerships. Also, programs and indicators in
Appendix 1 related to concession holders are present and detailed, and specific targets related
to their role were more pronounced compared to SP1: “There is a potential funding from
private concession holders for the restoration of more than 1.4 million hectare[sic] peatlands”
(SP2, 2017, p. 43). To illustrate this, the word count on “concession” was 45 for SP2, while
SP1 contained only 6. The PRA representative confirmed this: “for concession areas, it’s the
obligation of the permit holders to restore peat, including firefighting. Outside of concessions,
PRA handles [the fires]” (Interviewee 10, 2018).
SP as text
Author Who are involved in the
production of the
document?
• The PRA - although the document does not
identify the authors other than the MoEF
Reader /
audience
Who is the intended
reader?
• Peat restoration practitioners within the PRA’s
institutional network
Narrative
structure
How is the narrative
structured? What story
is being told?
• Peat restoration is conducted in order to support
community-based “sustainable development” and
achieve the targets of RPJMN 2015-2019
(Medium-term National Plan)
Omissions What have been
omitted?
• Details regarding restoring peat within
concession areas
• Indigenous aspects
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Additionally, mentions of indigenous communities and traditional farming within SP1 are
very rare. The word “adat” and “tradisional” is only mentioned three times each and in no
substantial capacity. This is not to say that the restoration project is a useless endeavor, indeed
village empowerment programs are at the heart of maintaining restored peat levels; rather, the
direction it is taking does not demonstrate acknowledgement of indigenous agency in peatland
policy innovation or management in general. Moreover, the document does not differentiate
between indigenous and non-indigenous villages (if indigenous villages were included at all)
and the underlying assumption seems to be that the same approach will work with these two
distinct groups. Thus, it continues to render opaque the indigenous communities’ way of life
in favor of current mainstream development strategies. However, no mention of the
indigenous community was mentioned at all in SP2, instead (like in SP1), “communities” and
“villagers” are all clumped together to form some abstract homogenous entity. This omission
in SP2 is particularly striking considering the more progressive attitude it adopted with regard
to concession holders compared to SP1.
Another important change seen in SP2 was the promised metric of peat restoration. Whereas
SP1 promised to restore 2 million hectares of peatland, SP2 updated that number to 2,492,509
hectares. To me, this suggests that the PRA wanted to give the impression of precision and
exactness in its operations, implying that the number indeed comes from somewhere.
The changes between SP1 and SP2 might be due to the recent fires that returned in September
2019, the worst since the 2015 haze crisis (Jong, 2019b). In order to maintain the image of the
PRA as one of the primary drivers in forest fire prevention and emission reduction, a more
accessible (hence the English version) and sophisticated document is presented as the
embodiment of the PRA’s operations.
5.1.2 Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land
Fires as text
GD as text
Author Who are involved in the
production of the
document?
• Main: CMfEA, NDPA, MoFE
• Supported by: GIZ, CIFOR, IPB
Reader /
audience
Who is the intended
reader?
• No one explicit
• At first glance for relevant parties who will
adopt the program, but also for donors and the
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The GD was written as part of a collaboration between the CMfEA, NDPA, MoEF in order to
create a working framework for forest and land fire prevention. This entails having high-
ranking officials from these government agencies as well as junior employees who did most
of the writing. The GD was supported by GIZ, CIFOR, and IPB although the text does not
explicitly to what capacity, but an interview with one of the writers reveals that CIFOR and
IPB assisted by providing expert judgement.
The report did not have an explicitly audience it was addressing, but it seems the general
public was one of them. The appendix suggests that it may be used as an operational
document for relevant agencies, but an interview with a West Kalimantan local government
agent (Interviewee 3, 2018) suggests that the GD itself was not used for fire prevention-
related programs as they were unfamiliar with the GD’s existence. This implies that the fire-
related programs were derived from internal communications between different levels of
government that mimics the content of the GD. Moreover, considering the GIZ’s involvement
in the production of the document, other international development organizations acting as
stakeholders in the forest fire issue more broadly may also be one of the intended audiences.
While it is difficult to determine what should be included and what should not be included in
the document without it veering away from its scope, there are a number of omissions that are
particularly relevant when analyzing fire prevention policies. First of all, the influence of the
palm oil industry is vastly understated to the point of omission. Although mentions of the
patronage network described by Varkkey (2016a) were present in chapters 3 and 4, the
corresponding strategies described in chapter 5 (p. 59) did not address this at all. Patronage
networks were recognized as “challenges” for law enforcement but clandestine rent-seeking
within the country’s biggest export industry were not discussed, and the strategies laid out in
chapter 5 did not go beyond the generic direction of “strengthening [law enforcement]
institutions” (GD, 2017, p. 42) and economic disincentives such as withdrawal of concession
public due to its style
Subject /
object
Who/what is framed as
the subject and
who/what is the object?
• The government is framed almost as a manager
that cleans up the mess left by private companies
and “naughty” smallholders
Omissions What have been
omitted?
• The involvement of the palm companies in
either instigating fires or structurally incentivizing
fires
• Addressing the patronage network in strategies
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permits. Secondly, indigenous communities were hardly mentioned at all, “adat” was only
mentioned once and “tradisional” only three times. This is generally due to the move away
from scapegoating indigenous people for the fires but this also means the lack of recognition
of the effects the fires have on these communities. The indigenous Iban communities of
Kapuas Hulu, West Kalimantan, for example, still rely on burning for subsistence farming
(Rogers, 2016). While economic diversification strategies described throughout the GD would
address land burning in general, it is unclear how such strategies can replace subsistence
farming by indigenous communities specifically.
5.1.3 Nationally Determined Contribution as text
The NDC was released by the GoI in November 2016, a year after the Paris Agreement was
signed in 2015. It was submitted to the UNFCCC and available to all UN member states who
ratified the Paris Agreement. As a member state of the UN and international community, it is
important to position Indonesia as acting in its best interest. This can take different forms such
as trying to project a positive image of Indonesian climate policy or protecting its lucrative
economic sectors.
The structure of the NDC acts as GoI’s show of commitment, detailing ‘promises’ to the
international community of what Indonesia pledges to do for a better future and generally
attempting to uphold a positive image of Indonesia. This is reflected in the ambitious
emission reduction targets of unconditional 29% reduction against the BAU scenario by 2030
NDC as text
Author Who are involved in the
production of the
document?
• GoI
Reader /
audience
Who is the intended
reader?
• UNFCCC, international community
Narrative
structure
How is the narrative
structured? What story
is being told?
• The document is structured as a “commitment,”
detailing plans or “promises” of Indonesia’s low
(or at least lower) carbon future
• LULUCF as main contributor to GHG
emissions
Omissions What have been
omitted?
• Oil palm industry
• Besides that, nothing much since the document
is meant to be generic and encompassing
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and 41% with international support. Such targets demonstrate GoI’s commitment to reduce
emissions but perhaps commitment alone while substantial and adequate policies supporting it
are lacking. The ad-hoc nature of BRG and REDD+ programs is evident in highlighting this
(Alisjahbana & Busch, 2017).
Additionally, the NDC states that the “main contributing sectors were LUCF [land-use change
and forestry] including peat fires (47.8%)” (NDC, 2016, p. 2), framing LUCF and related fires
as one of the main causes for GHG emissions and a priority for intervention for the near
future. In response to this, the NDC considers that “REDD+ will be an important component
of the NDC target from [sic] land use sector” (NDC, 2016, p. 3) and will employ a
“landscape-scale and ecosystem management approach,” though not much is elaborated on
this aspect.
Indonesia’s determination to show their commitment in emissions reduction allowed for a
generic NDC that omitted very little. The scale of the strategies and the different parties
involved at various political and social scales made sure that the NDC would encompass
almost every aspect for Indonesia’s climate policies. With regard to the involvement of
marginalized groups in sustainable forest management, the NDC states that it will include
“social forestry through active participation of the private sector, small and medium
enterprises, civil society organizations, local communities and the most vulnerable groups,
especially adat communities. . .and women” (NDC, 2016, p. 2).
One glaring omission, however, is the role of the oil palm industry in deforestation and
consequently GHG emissions. Mentions of “oil palm” or “palm oil” were all in the Annex at
the end of the document, practically as footnotes, one under Agriculture, Forestry, and Other
Land Uses (AFOLU) (NDC, 2016, p. 15) and two under Industrial Liquid Waste (NDC, 2016,
p. 17). This demonstrates the implicit assumption that the oil palm industry has no role in
Indonesia’s climate policies, which makes sense considering Indonesia is the world’s biggest
palm oil exporter and would take care to protect its economic viability in the future.
Moreover, despite the NDC’s targets of unconditional 29% emissions reduction, the
conditional “up to” 41% reductions with international assistance by 2030 was altered later in
the document. Indeed, the planned target of 41% conditional reduction was changed to 38%,
as noted by Tacconi (2018). He argues that it is “contradictory for the main body of the NDC
to present a commitment that is noted by the international community and immediately
69
watered down in a little-noticed accompanying table” (Tacconi, 2018, p. 842). This puts into
question the real commitment placed by the GoI.
5.1.4 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution as text
The ATHP was a product of many deliberations following annual fires and transboundary
haze pollution, culminating in the 1997-98 haze crisis. Ratified by most ASEAN member
states in 2003, it was produced by representatives of member states, mostly from the
respective Environment Ministries, as a framework for joint cooperation in dealing with
transboundary haze pollution moving forward.
The objective of the agreement, as stated in Article 2, is to prevent transboundary haze
pollution “through concerted national efforts and intensified regional and international co-
operation” (ASEAN Secretariat, 2002, p. 4, emphasis added). This emphasis on national
capacity and responsibility can also be seen in Articles 4, 7, and 9 and reflects ASEAN’s
model of regionalism where national sovereignty and non-interference form the backdrop of
regional cooperation. This is especially evident in Article 12 on the provision of assistance
between member states where “Assistance can only be employed at the request of and with
the consent of the requesting Party, or, when offered by another Party or Parties, with the
consent of the receiving Party” (ASEAN Secretariat, 2002, p. 9, emphasis added). On disputes
and their settlement process, Article 27 of the agreement states that “Any dispute between
Parties as to the interpretation or application of, or compliance with, this Agreement or any
protocol thereto, shall be settled amicably by consultation or negotiation” (ASEAN
Secretariat, 2002, p. 17, emphasis added). Not only does this render the agreement weaker
ATHP as text
Author Who are involved in the
production of the
document?
• ASEAN member states
Reader /
audience
Who is the intended
reader?
• ASEAN member states
Narrative
structure
How is the narrative
structured? What story
is being told?
• Importance on non-interference and national
sovereignty
Omissions What have been
omitted?
• Current international climate policy contexts
• Corruption-related measures
70
that allows member states to freely ‘interpret’ its articles, accountability measures are also
vague and almost unenforceable should member states not live up to the agreed actions.
Contradictions between clauses are also present. Of note is in Article 9 that includes the
promotion of “indigenous knowledge and practices in fire prevention and management”
(ASEAN Secretariat, 2014, p. 8) but at the same time states are required to develop
“programmes and strategies to promote zero burning policy to deal with land and/or forest
fires resulting in transboundary haze pollution” (ASEAN Secretariat, 2002, p. 8). Although
this was meant to be generic points within the agreement that applies to various indigenous
groups, we have previously seen that many indigenous communities, particularly in
Kalimantan, use fires as method of clearing land after harvesting. This contradiction can
easily be used as pretext to further clamp down on indigenous land rights, despite growing
evidence that indigenous-managed lands have relatively higher biodiversity (Garnett et al.,
2018; Schuster, Germain, Bennett, Reo, & Arcese, 2019).
Moreover, there was only one mention of private companies in the whole document as stated
in Article 3(5), in a capacity that provides much leeway for vested interests to ignore it all
together: in it member states were required to involve all stakeholders, including “private
enterprises,” but only “as appropriate” (ASEAN Secretariat, 2002, p. 5). This was not
unintentional: multiple interviewees told Varkkey that sensitive issues were not even
considered during the treaty negotiations and that “even though there was an unspoken
understanding that commercial plantation burning was the major source of haze, the issue of
illegal burning by local and foreign plantation companies was never raised during discussions
leading up to the ATHP” (2016a, p, 180).
5.1.5 Summary
All the documents are all authored by state actors with the exception of the ATHP which was
produced by the extra-state ASEAN. The audience for all the document is generally external
to the author, and thus subject to accountability and criticism. The implication of this is that
the text of each document will tend to reflect the author’s self-interest; indeed, this can be
seen by what has been omitted and what kind of narrative is being shaped.
Across the documents the same issues emerge. For the SP and the GD, for instance, mentions
of indigenous involvement is very minimal. The NDC and ATHP may be excused in its lack
71
of specificity regarding indigenous communities considering the scale in which they operate,
but with the SP and GD’s programs both involve a great deal of land-based activity, it should
not be outlandish to say that indigenous people should have a more intensive involvement.
Private companies and concessionaires also lack any clarity in terms of intervention across all
documents. Perhaps one of the most destructive industries, the palm oil sector is even more
obscured in its involvement. The SP is quite detailed in its engagement with concession
holders but this too is a ‘black box’ in which supervision of their compliance is at risk of what
Li (2018) describes as the “mafia system” where predatory practices within plantations are
normal in order to create wealth, but by exploiting disenfranchised groups. The law is thus
“brought inside, shaped by and absorbed into the plantation complex” (Li, 2018, p. 333). This
is similar to Varkkey’s (2016a) discussion on patronage networks. With the patronage
networks existing across national borders, and the existing regional framework emphasizing
national sovereignty i.e. the ATHP, it is not surprising then that these omissions exist.
5.2 Documents as process
5.2.1 Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan as process
The SP was produced relatively quickly, issued on November 2016 after the Presidential
Decree no. 1 2016 on the establishment of the PRA was issued in January. This meant that
there was almost a year of the PRA not having a concrete and extensive strategy toward peat
SP as process
Production /
circulation
What was the
production process
like? How was/is it
being circulated?
• The SP was produced relatively quickly, issued
under a year after the Presidential Decree no. 1
2016 was issued
Trajectory What is the document’s
trajectory?
• The BRG is set to dissolve in the MoEF in 2020
Chains of
documents
What other documents
are related to the
current document? How
are they relevant?
• Presidential Decree no. 1 2016 on the Peat
Restoration Agency
Controversy
/ consensus
Was the document’s
production process
controversial?
• Indigenous Recognition bill still stalled in
parliament
72
restoration. Indeed, the PRA was asked by the Presidential Staff Office to execute operations
immediately two months after its establishment as hot spots were starting to appear in certain
areas (Pramadiba, 2016).
The PRA was always meant to be an ad hoc organization, set to be dissolved at the end of
2020 into the MoEF as well as local governments:
When our agency ends in 2020, [our] assets we hand them over to the MoEF—we
hand them over—because our agency no longer exists. . .so the function is taken over
by the MoEF, they have the function of peat restoration. Whereas in the field, canal
blocks have to be handed over the communities, it’s them that will then handle [the
infrastructure] so that the function [of managing] will be in the local government. How
far their ability will be in the future, we don’t know. Because, restoration before the
PRA was done by NGOs on existing [hot] spots through external funds. (Interviewee
10, 2018)
This puts peat restoration at risk of slow bureaucratic processes. Whereas, under the president,
the PRA has more focus and independence in undertaking restoration activities. Additionally,
as restoration infrastructure is handed over to local governments, this makes the MoEF (and
effectively the central government) merely as a ‘manager’ that monitors the activities of local
governments in terms of funding or bureaucratic assistance. This can be seen as a return to
institutional business-as-usual where, as the ‘threat’ of fires is over, institutions can ‘go back
to normal’ albeit with additional focus areas.
As a general rule, local communities are supposedly ‘consulted’ in order for fair
representation within the policymaking process. However, the level to which ordinary citizens
actually take part in the process is questionable; and this applies to indigenous people as well.
The PRA and SP were established and produced while the bill for the Recognition and
Protection of Indigenous Peoples' Rights has long been stalled by members of the legislation.
This means that indigenous communities have no reliable framework from which stewardship
of (various types of) land can be derived since even the definition of who is indigenous has
not yet been adopted by the highest levels of decision-makers. This is despite recent
developments in the recognition of customary laws and forests by the President, albeit its
controversial case-by-case nature (Mongabay, 2017; Moniaga, 2019).
5.2.2 Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land
Fires as process
73
The GD was published several months after the establishment of the BRG under the
Presidential Decree no. 1 2016 but is itself derived from the Presidential Instruction no. 11
2015 some time before it. Due to the number of parties involved in its production, the GD was
written in under a year, which started in early 2016, shortly after the 2015 haze crisis
(Interviewee 13, 2019). The finished physical copy is a well-bound book, printed on quality
matte paper suggesting that it is intended for distribution to important stakeholders – which it
was. When being interviewed, Interviewee 9 (2018) more than once referred to the GD for
any and all information regarding the NDPA’s policies and strategies on forest and land fire
prevention. This is also how I required a phyical copy of the document, when he took it out of
a display shelf containing several other documents that have been published by the NDPA and
handed it to me, “everything [about forest fire prevention] is in here [the physical document]”
(Interviewee 9, 2018).
The document itself was a result of the need for an “integrated” approach for dealing with
wildfires, and the government’s focus on prevention. The meaning of an integrated approach
is a multi-institution effort, coordinated by three Coordinating Ministries i.e. the CMfEA, the
CMfPLSA, and the CMfHDC—this is also known as the multi-pronged approach (Varkkey,
2017). It also involves parties from almost every political scale; from ministries, regional and
local governments, down to village administrations. This also includes involving the private
sector from multi-nationals and small plantation owners. Not to mention the multi-sector
GD as process
Production /
circulation
What was the
production process
like? How was/is it
being circulated?
• Based on Presidential Instruction no. 11 2015
• Formulated after the establishment of BRG
History What is the history of
the topic of the
document?
• The need for integrated national prevention,
response, and rehabilitation policies. Emphasis on
prevention measures.
Trajectory What is the document’s
trajectory?
• Shift prevention efforts more to indirect causes
after 2020
Chains of
documents
What other documents
are related to the
current document? How
are they relevant?
• Presidential Instruction no. 11 2015, a direct
instruction from the president to ministers for
better control of forest and land fires.
Controversy
/ consensus
Was the document’s
production process
controversial?
• Relatively uncontroversial due to the speed of
the writing process and public pressure on the
forest fire issue
74
aspect of the strategy, which means involving actors from agriculture, education, trade,
disaster management, the tech industry, and civil society.
Although the GD states that the strategies proposed in the document are from 2017 to 2019,
Interviewee 9 (2018) stated that they had recently extended the programs until 2020. From
there, as stated in the document, the focus would shift toward disaster response and
rehabilitation as the bulk of the effort in the current approach is on prevention. This would
take place along with PRA’s dissolution into the MoEF which explains the reduction of
resources in prevention measures in the GD as the bulk of forest fire mitigation relies heavily
on peat restoration.
The GD is directly derived from the Presidential Instruction no. 11 2015 on Improving
Control of Forest and Land Fires, which is a legal document issued by the president addressed
to his cabinet ministers. The Instruction required all ministries and government agencies to
contribute in dealing with forest fires and highlighted the three main areas of eradicating
them: fire prevention, fire response, and post-fire rehabilitation. The Instruction was signed at
the very end of the 2015 haze crisis in 24th October 2015. The GD, then, is the follow up
document to this ‘integrated approach’ and was promoted as a revered plan for forest fire
mitigation (BAPPENAS, 2016).
Due to the severity of the 2015 haze crisis, the GD was a welcome effort from the public.
Along with the establishment of the PRA, the GD signified the government’s serious efforts
in dealing with the fire and haze problem unlike previous policies had done.
5.2.3 Nationally Determined Contribution as process
NDC as process
Production /
circulation
What was the
production process
like? How was/is it
being circulated?
• Produced after COP21, submitted to the
UNFCCC
• UNFCCC stores the NDC as well other
countries’ NDCs
History What is the history of
the topic of the
document?
• The NDC is the product of many commitments
by the GoI to reduce emissions that crystallized
during COP21
Trajectory What is the document’s
trajectory?
• 29% unconditional reduction by 2030
• 41% conditional reduction by 2030 with
75
The NDC was produced following Indonesia’s submission of its Intended NDC several
months prior and is available on the UNFCCC website. Its history is not unlike other
countries’ NDCs in that it is the latest major iteration of climate change policies under the
UNFCCC. Indonesia’s first major foray against climate change began in 2009 when then-
president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pledged to reduce emission levels by 26% by 2020
from BAU levels, citing that Indonesia’s emissions “come from forest-related issues, such as
forest fires and deforestation” (Yudhoyono in Fogarty, 2009). Following this, Indonesia made
some significant steps in its national climate policy, including the production of the National
Action Plan to Reduce GHG Emissions (RAN-GRK) and the National Action Plan for
Climate Change Adaptation (RAN-API). This was before the introduction of the Intended
NDC mechanism introduced in COP19 in Warsaw, 2013 and later the NDC mechanism in
Paris, 2015. The mechanism required countries who signed the UNFCCC to submit their
emission reduction targets and strategies. Thus, the targets contained in RAN-GRK and RAN-
API were reiterated in Indonesia’s INDC and the subsequent NDC (submitted in 2016) i.e. to
unconditionally reduce 26% of GHG emissions by 2020 and conditionally by 29% by 2030,
while up to 41% reduction is considered on the condition of the provision of international
assistance.
Both the Paris Agreement and Indonesia’s submission of the NDC was timely, considering
the 2015 transboundary haze crisis that took place several months prior. Not only did this
restore the trust (to some extent) of the international community and regional partners, it
allowed Indonesia to somewhat deflect and tone down the controversy surrounding its palm
oil industry and its often-associated deforestation activities. Being one of the top emitters of
GHG related to forestry and land use change, Indonesia’s show of commitment vis-à-vis
climate action through the NDC creates the impression that it is doing much in terms of
international assistance
Chains of
documents
What other documents
are related to the
current document? How
are they relevant?
• Intended NDC
• RAN-GRK (National Action Plan to Reduce
GHG Emissions)
• RAN-API (National Action Plan for Climate
Change Adaptation)
Controversy
/ consensus
Was the document’s
production process
controversial?
• No
76
emissions reduction in the AFOLU sector, while the palm oil industry is protected from
(institutionalized) scrutiny.
5.2.4 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution as process
The ATHP was a product of several deliberations by ASEAN but was the first legally-binding
agreement produced related to transboundary haze pollution. Negotiated in 2001 and signed
by 10 member states in 2002, the ATHP entered into force by 2003 (Nguitragool, 2011;
Varkkey, 2016a), with Indonesia not part of the ratifying states. Naturally, this drew heavy
criticisms from its regional neighbors, considering that the bulk of the fires take place within
Indonesia’s borders.
Despite being the first legally-binding agreement, some scholars are skeptical toward its
implementation. First of all, the ATHP did not differ too greatly from its predecessor, the
Regional Haze Action Plan (RHAP) produced in 1997. The RHAP was non-binding and was
regarded as insufficient in dealing with the haze problem, (Nguitragool, 2011), while the
ATHP as process
Production /
circulation
What was the
production process
like? How was/is it
being circulated?
• Produced in 2002 by a majority of ASEAN
member states
• The last member state to ratify the agreement
was Indonesia in 2014
History What is the history of
the topic of the
document?
• Transboundary pollution from forest and land
fires occurring since the late 1980s with the
biggest one taking place in 1997-98 prompted
ASEAN to produce the ATHP following similar
agreements
Chains of
documents
What other documents
are related to the
current document? How
are they relevant?
• 1995 ASEAN Co-operation Plan on
Transboundary Pollution
• 1997 Regional Haze Action Plan
• 1998 Hanoi Plan of Action
• Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act
2014
Controversy
/ consensus
Was the document’s
production process
controversial?
• Indonesia’s late ratification drew heavy criticism
since most of the fires took place within its borders
• While at first hailed as the first legally binding
agreement to combat haze, later comments are
more critical due to ASEAN’s weak institutional
capacity to enforce the agreement
77
ATHP made little changes aside from adding legal enforcement. Secondly, considering
ASEAN’s model of regionalism, the treaty was designed to facilitate national interests more
than regional ones. Interviewees told Varkkey that “the ATHP. . .was a highly watered
down[sic] document that continued to protect national economic interests, preserve state
sovereignty and deflect responsibility on the haze issue” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 179); likewise,
Nguitragool argues that “important provisions . . . are left to member parties to interpret and
apply” (Nguitragool, 2011, p. 357). During the negotiating process, the ASEAN Secretariat
backed the notion of intervening during crises but since member states had the final say and
not the Secretariat, they opted for non-intervention as usual, demonstrating the Secretariat’s
limited organizational capacity (Varkkey, 2016a).
It was not until September 2014 that Indonesia ratified the agreement. There were a number
of possible motivations for Indonesia’s non-ratification of the ATHP. Varkkey (2016a)
discovered that, while some believe that Indonesia “had no reason” to not ratify, others told
her that Indonesia never had any meaningful intention to ratify the agreement in the first
place. Signing the agreement was sufficient in demonstrating political good will and
upholding Indonesia’s image without having to ratify and fulfilling the agreement in any
substantial capacity, considering ASEAN’s philosophy of non-interference.
Additionally, the ATHP follows the ‘ASEAN minus X’ formula with regard to ratification by
member states. The agreement would enter into force with a minimum number of ratifications
without having to actually require all member states to ratify. In principle, this allows
members states who do not have the resources to comply to an agreement or those who do not
have much stake in the subject matter to not disturb consensus and the agreement can go as
planned. In the case of ATHP, six ratifications were needed for it to enter into force and while
countries such as Laos who did not have much interest in the issue were expected to not ratify
the agreement, “Laos did ratify the ATHP, while Indonesian[sic] continued to delay its
ratification” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 182). As the ATHP entered into force without its ratification
in 2003, Indonesia saw little urgency in fulfilling the agreement and submitting any
instrument of ratification.
Varkkey (2016a) argued that Indonesia’s path to ratification met with resistance both at the
ministerial and parliamentary levels. Considering the significance of the oil palm sector and
its need for land, Indonesia’s delayed ratification was due to “a combination of national
interests and patronage actors” because although “the ATHP might have been rational at the
78
regional level, it made less sense to the Indonesian political and business elites” (Varkkey,
2016a, p. 182). This can be seen during the negotiation process in which the Ministry of
Environment (MoE) led most of Indonesia’s environmental diplomacy without actually
having the institutional authority to enforce it domestically. Prior to Jokowi’s term in October
2014, the current MoEF is made up of the MoE and the more powerful Ministry of Forestry
(MoF) who were not much involved in negotiating the ATHP while possessing much of the
authority with regard to preventing forest fires and haze:
Following the Regional Autonomy (No. 22/1999) and Fiscal Decentralization (No.
25/1999) Acts, local administrations became entrusted with the authority to issue
permits for forest resource exploitation. The mandate to prevent fires in forest and
plantation areas has been put under the inspection role of the Ministry of Forestry and
the Ministry of Agriculture. And while fire management, suppression, and control
have been the responsibilities of regional governments as well as the Ministry of
Forestry, legal investigation and enforcement still belong to local police departments.
Thus—unlike the Indonesian president and the MoE, which have been the prime
targets of regional criticism at the diplomatic level—the institutions with actual
authority to prevent the haze disaster have been arguably distant from regional
pressures. (Nguitragool, 2011, p. 372, emphasis added)
This was why interviewees told Varkkey that the only reason Indonesia signed the ATHP in
the first place was because only the MoE was in agreement with its principles while other
ministries had vastly different ideas on what the ATHP should look like. More importantly,
Varkkey found that some official within the MoF “have cultivated close patronage links with
prominent players in the oil palm plantation sector” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 184), and was
generally against the agreement. The ATHP posed a threat to many oil palm actors and their
patronage network within the MoF, hence the MoF’s resistance.
At the parliamentary level, powerful lobby groups are closely associated with members of
parliament (MP) such as the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil Commission (ISPO) and the
Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI). Since in Indonesia international agreements need
to be made into law passed by the parliament in order to take effect domestically, the ATHP
faced strong opposition from MPs and interest groups prior to its ratification. Many of
Varkkey’s (2016a) interviewees said that GAPKI are very close with certain MPs and have
been successful in influencing policies that benefit the oil palm sector since members of
GAPKI are typically powerful individuals within the oil palm sector itself. Understanding that
vested interests underscore the parliament’s reluctance in ratifying the ATHP is important in
making sense of Indonesia’s delayed ratification.
79
Issues of sovereignty were often brought up by parliamentarians to argue against the ATHP
citing ASEAN’s norm of non-interference. It was also argued that the ATHP “unfairly placed
all responsibility of the haze on Indonesia” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 187), despite the neutral
language adopted in the agreement. In relation to this, Indonesian MPs also argued that there
was some kind of conspiracy to undermine Indonesia considering how the ATHP would
supposedly benefit other member states more and did not consider Indonesia’s interests. This
is despite the fact that people in proximity of the fires would benefit greatly from the
agreement, thus demonstrating the “interests that the parliamentarians had in mind did not
include the social well-being of the people, but instead the economic interests and practices of
the oil palm plantation sector” (Varkkey, 2016a, p. 188).
5.2.5 Summary
Apart from the ATHP, the process of producing the other documents were relatively quick
and uncontroversial. The contents of the NDC carried over most of what was in the INDC,
RAN-GRK, and RAN-API, the GD expanded on the Presidential Instruction no. 11 of 2015,
while the SP derives from the Presidential Decree no. 1 of 2016. The uncontroversial nature
of the writing process of these documents brings into question their inclusivity and
environmental policymaking in general. Indeed, we have seen previously that indigenous
communities have little involvement in these programs and there has been no indication that
this is by choice. Documents form an important part of the policymaking process and so far,
we have seen its depoliticization through the, I argue, undemocratic document-making
process.
On the ATHP’s controversial process, Nguitragool (2011) and Varkkey (2016a) have
observed how Indonesia’s delayed ratification was at the expense of local communities who
suffered from the haze the most. Naturally, it is in those people’s best interest that a regional
framework that would essentially protect them be enforced by the relevant parties. However,
it was argued that existing patronage networks were working against Indonesia’s ratification
of the ATHP (Varkkey, 2013, 2016a). The influence these networks have on the policy
process can then be inferred to work in similar ways with regard to the SP, GD, and NDC.
80
5.3 Documents as context
5.3.1 Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan as context
The SP can be seen as a crystallization of PRA’s activities in document form. It is used by
peat restoration practitioners within both the PRA and partnered parties in other agencies.
Through this we are able to see how the PRA forms and transforms the issue of peat fires,
restoration, and emissions reduction. As the PRA was established at the beginning of 2016
and the SP released within the same year, the government was applauded for its commitment
in forest fire mitigation so soon after a particularly devastating haze crisis, as well as COP21
in which the Paris Agreement was signed. This bode well for Indonesia’s environmental
policy outlook seen both from citizens and domestic observers alike as well as international
bodies. Factoring in the PRA’s position within the cabinet, which was under the direct
instruction of the president, the SP reflects the governments and the president’s extensive
strategy in mitigating peatland fires and reaching emissions reduction targets.
At the same time, the limited involvement of private companies and concession holders
suggests the government’s unwillingness to properly address some of the root causes of the
fires. The ‘black box’ of restoration and prevention by concession holders is only addressed
SP as context
Daily life,
routine
work
How has the document
been adopted to routine
work/procedures?
• The SP was set to be a guideline for peat
restoration practitioners in relevant agencies
• As documentation since it is published on
PRA’s website
Authority of
procedure
How did the document
become authoritative?
• The document’s authority came from Head of
PRA and PRA’s ministerial level position
Issue
formation
What issues have been
formed by the
documents?
• Urgency for peat conservation and restoration
• Communal responsibility of peat restoration
• Positive image of the state for coming up with a
‘progressive’ environmental policy
• Importance of the public sector’s role in
restoring peat, while less on the private sector
whose specific strategies were left to each
responsible company
Real-world
effects
How did the document
contribute to real-world
changes?
• Formed strategic basis for PRA’s activities who
managed to restore 679,901 ha by late 2018 (PRA,
2019)
81
through internal monitoring of concession activities by respective permit holders, which,
considering the strong patronage culture described by Varkkey (2016a), is at risk of collusion
by vested interests. The SP managed to divert attention away from this critical aspect through
extensive infrastructure and social/community empowerment programs.
Moreover, the continued sidelining of indigenous communities in the SP, as we have seen
previously from the removal of indigenous involvement in SP2, highlights the detachment of
such actors from the issue, to use Asdal’s (2015) words. This is not to say that every peat
restoration program or peatland should involve indigenous communities. Indeed, it is the
unclear and opaque land ownership for indigenous communities that prevents appropriate
peatland management in the first place. As of now, no one is entirely certain which peatland is
under indigenous claim or not as the state is still relatively restrictive in issuing customary
forest land (Moniaga, 2019).
5.3.2 Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land
Fires as context
GD as context
Daily life,
routine work
How has the document
been adopted to routine
work/procedures?
• It has become a reference document for
strategic programs in government agencies
Information
infrastructure
How has the document
been coopted into the
general information
infrastructure?
• While not explicitly referred to in local
governments, the essential contents of the GD
were apparent in local government policies
Authority of
procedure
How did the document
become authoritative?
• Due to the NDPA authoring the document and
coordinating the grand design in general (taking
into account its position in the government
structure)
Issue
formation
What issues have been
formed by the
documents?
• Fire mitigation without indigenous community
involvement
• Fire mitigation without palm oil industry
involvement
Real-world
effects
How did the document
contribute to real-world
changes?
• Continued support of peat restoration policies
• Demonstrates commitment of GoI to prevent
forest fires
82
The GD has become a demonstration of the seriousness of the national government in dealing
with forest fires. Although it had a chance in dealing with deep-seated issues of patronage and
political corruption, it ended up focusing on strengthening institutions, economic incentives
and disincentives (primarily for smallholders), and including the PRA’s peat restoration
projects. The GD thus see the issue the government can handle is one identifiable with human
behavior, but more specifically smallholder behavior as most of the strategies are geared
toward them. Indigenous smallholders, in particular, and their yearly gawai6, are something
that the government has not been able to “deal with” as it is part of their culture as an
interviewee from the MoEF states: “[they] clear the harvest area by burning, that’s— from a
cultural perspective, can gawai not involve burning, can it be just a symbolic ritual? That’s
what we are having trouble with” (Interviewee 11, 2018).
With the GD’s focus equally on fire mitigation, emergency response, and managing direct
causes in the first phase i.e. the multi-pronged approach (2017-2020), the PRA’s peat
restoration projects is somewhat coopted into the multi-ministerial effort of the GD. This
allows continued support of peat restoration projects.
Similar to the SP, the GD’s approach on fire mitigation does not involve much participation
of indigenous communities and the palm oil industry. As discussed previously, the GD only
proposes ‘community’ participation in its programs and thus conflating it with indigenous
communities whose lifestyles and livelihood vary not only between each other but also with
other groups e.g. non-indigenous locals or transmigrants. As we will see in the next section,
this is exacerbated by the NDC. With the bill for the Recognition and Protection of
Indigenous People’s Rights law still stuck in legal limbo, there would be little counterweight
to the GD’s policies in terms of indigenous protection.
Likewise, the palm oil industry is not heavily involved in the GD’s mitigation programs. The
central assumption that their business-as-usual activities can be swayed through economic
disincentives and permit suspension is problematic because it relies on each concession holder
to monitor its own mitigation programs. With strong patronage networks as described in
Varkkey (2016a) underscoring oil palm agricultural activity, it is safe to say that such ‘soft’
measures will not be effective in the long run. The fires that broke out in September 2019, the
worst since 2015, supports this line of thinking.
6 Communal ritual during harvest time where using fire to clear land for new crops takes place.
83
5.3.3 Nationally Determined Contribution as context
As stated earlier, the INDC was submitted by Indonesia during a period where Indonesia’s
environmental management was brought into question, with the 2015 haze crisis ending just
before COP21 took place. The NDC, submitted to replace the INDC, is deeply influential on
Indonesian development policies, one of their strategic principals are “mainstreaming climate
agenda into development planning: Recognizing the needs to integrate climate change into
development and spatial planning and the budgeting process, Indonesia will include key
climate change indicators in formulating its development programme’s targets” (NDC, 2016,
p. 5). This means that its stated targets and strategic approaches are coopted into the Medium-
term National Development Plan (RPJMN), which, for the SP and GD documents, signifies
their underlying principles. Thus, the activities proposed by the SP and GD should be seen
through the lens of NDC targets.
With Indonesia’s LULUCF sector being the highest contributor of GHG emissions, as stated
in the NDC, the logical implications are that the SP, GD, and (to some extent) the ATHP
serve to achieve the intended emissions reduction targets. This implies two things. First, it can
be argued that peat restoration, fire mitigation, and haze prevention are policy areas primarily
intended to reduce emissions. This ignores the social dimensions of these policy areas such as
peasant/worker’s rights in plantations, indigenous rights, and public health concerns. The
NDC as context
Daily life,
routine
work
How has the document
been adopted to routine
work/procedures?
• It has become the basis of many climate-related
development policy, including the GD and the SP
Authority of
procedure
How did the document
become authoritative?
• Through the president’s ratification
• Law no. 16 of 2016 on the Ratification of the
Paris Agreement to the UNFCCC
Issue
formation
What issues have been
formed by the
documents?
• Urgency to reduce emissions and shift towards
low carbon economy
• Major emphasis on LULUCF, especially
considering COP21’s proximity to the 2015 haze
crisis
• Ironically, the downplay of palm oil industry
involvement, considering the previous point
Real-world
effects
How did the document
contribute to real-world
changes?
• Institutionalization of emissions reduction
activities on a national scale
84
NDC, lauded for its progressiveness vis-à-vis climate change, instead paves the way for
technocratic solutions that sidesteps rights-based approaches to the climate crisis.
Secondly, and ironically, reducing emissions in the LULUCF sector does not really involve of
the palm oil industry and other plantation-based sectors. The involvement of these industries
is thus downplayed despite their land-based activities being stated as a major source of GHG
emissions in the NDC. Once again, the implication is that Indonesia is not ready to involve its
most lucrative commodity in more large-scale climate policies such as peat restoration. What
is happening now is Indonesia’s attitude towards emissions reduction is one that is
contradictory: on one hand, LULUCF-based emissions reduction is addressed through
massive infrastructural mitigation projects; on the other hand, the palm oil industry is shielded
from scrutiny as well as policy despite it being one of the major causes for deforestation
(Vijay, Pimm, Jenkins, & Smith, 2016).
Due to NDC’s mainstreaming into the national development planning discourse, this
contradiction is institutionalized into the state apparatus and risks being embedded into future
climate and environmental policy frameworks.
5.3.4 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution as context
Arguments against the ATHP’s ratification have been mainly about political concerns rather
than environmental considerations grounded in reality. It was not until the appointment of Dr.
A Sonny Keraf as Environment Minister by Jokowi in his first term, who was involved in
ATHP as context
Daily life,
routine
work
How has the document
been adopted to routine
work/procedures?
• It has not been utilized to its full potential, as the
GoI moves away from ASEAN to a more domestic
outlook
Authority of
procedure
How did the document
become authoritative?
• The first agreement on regional haze that
contains legally binding clauses, ratified by
member states
Issue
formation
What issues have been
formed by the
documents?
• The importance of curbing transboundary haze
• Conversely, the importance of national
sovereignty and non-interference
Real-world
effects
How did the document
contribute to real-world
changes?
• Consolidated GoI’s haze prevention policies
• At the same time, it has been criticized for being
“toothless”
85
much of the ATHP negotiations and supported its ratification, that Indonesia finally ratified
the ATHP as Varkkey (2016b) pointed out and argued that his appointment may have played
a significant role. This move can be seen as Jokowi attempting to consolidate his standing as
the new president after a polarizing election and slowing economy (Domínguez, 2014; Lamb,
2014). Some also saw the possibility of Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Act of 2014 as an
influence, making Indonesia’s ratification half-hearted rather than out of its own volition
(Bell, 2014).
The ATHP was significant in that it marked Indonesia’s commitment to managing
transboundary haze and forest fires at the regional level. It was also the first legally binding
agreement pertaining to transboundary haze. However, ASEAN’s history of promoting
capitalism during the Cold War and more recently neoliberalism (Springer, 2017), combined
with its principles of national sovereignty, economic growth, and non-interference suggests
that the ATHP has less to do with benefitting marginalized and/or disadvantaged groups and
more with prioritizing elite-owned natural resources with an environmentalist flavor.
Malaysia and Singapore have previously defended Indonesia’s right to not ratify the ATHP
(Varkkey, 2016a), demonstrating their economic interests in protecting industry assets when
taking into account the amount of Malaysian and Singaporean oil palm companies in
Indonesia.
The same perspective can be applied to Indonesia’s restoration of peatlands. The PRA’s
efforts, though lauded for its scale and determination, is part of the broader socioecological
fix within the oil palm political economy where sub-national, national, and regional actors
contest the right for the continuation of palm oil production. The lack of any substantial effort
on addressing transgressions within oil palm concessions at the ASEAN level, as reflected in
the ATHP, shows reluctance in actually adopting more radical measures both on Indonesia’s
and ASEAN’s part. This also results in the decoupling of haze/forest fires and oil palm
agriculture as an issue. As oil palm plantations encroach into pristine peatlands, the resulting
fires from slash-and-burn for land clearing cannot be seen as having little to do with the oil
palm industry.
5.3.5 Summary
Within the broader political economic context, the documents become material manifestations
of the institutions they represent—reflecting their attitudes, characteristics, and intentions.
86
Across the four documents, technocratic superiority in addressing forest fires and climate
change in general is implied through its content and writing process. Substantial community
and/or indigenous engagement with the topic of forest fires is replaced by technocratic
managerialisms at different scales involving both the public and private sectors managing the
‘masses.’ The ‘correct’ way is thus that of what these documents propose.
Similarly, with the NDC’s emissions reduction targets being mainstreamed into the wider
national development paradigm, the programs of the SP and the GD serve to primarily meet
these targets. Considering how LULUCF-based emissions are the main area of intervention in
the NDC, the programs in the SP and GD need to be situated appropriately. Indeed, with the
ATHP lack of concern for public health through its emphasis on non-intervention, all the
documents seem to revolve around the issue of emission targets instead of the public good.
This is not to say that none of them are ‘anti-public’; rather, emissions reduction is unevenly
positioning these policies against more rights-based and equity concerns.
Moreover, institutional reputation—specifically the GoI—seems to be an important theme
in the SP, NDC, and ATHP. This is suggested by the SP’s improved second edition uploaded
to the PRA website, the NDC’s ‘marketing’ yet somewhat misleading figures of 41%
conditional GHG reduction, and the ATHP’s emphasis of non-interference and national
sovereignty. Most importantly, perhaps, is the political economic protection of the palm oil
industry from radical policies and scrutiny. The industry’s minimal involvement across the
documents reinforces Varkkey’s (2016a) arguments regarding patronage networks and their
protection of economic interests. The reputation of Indonesia being the world’s top palm oil
producer needs upholding, whether through discourses of development necessity, national
sovereignty, and/or ‘sustainable’ agriculture (cf. Goldstein, 2016b).
87
6 Discussion
6.1 Expert documents and producing nature
I argued previously that peat restoration and forest fire mitigation policies serve as
socioecological fixes that attempt to ‘fix’ the problem of forest fires and (transboundary)
haze. These set of policies not only attempts to avoid socioecological crisis i.e. forest fires,
but they do so by deferring them temporally into future through the deployment of fixed
capital. Here, restored peatlands under the PRA’s strategic projects act as fixed capital in the
carbon economy, offsetting necessary carbon emissions for certain sectors. This process is
described by Smith (2007b) as the “real” subsumption of nature wherein nature becomes an
accumulation strategy (Katz, 1998).
The deployment of these socioecological fixes is not without a significant involvement of
expert documents such as the ones I have analyzed. In this context, documents form part of
the ideological aspect of a socioecological fix and its deployment. The pretexts and promises
laid out in the documents serve to construct a necessary ‘ideology’ of positive state-sponsored
environmental programs and thus earning the ‘consent’ of the public. The commitment to
address the ‘underproduction of nature’ i.e. the loss of peat and forestlands reinforces this
further. However, I have argued that marginalized groups such as indigenous communities are
not included in this ‘public’ and are largely omitted from the political process. This notion of
massive infrastructural projects without significant involvement of indigenous communities
being the solution to the forest fire problem demonstrates two things. Firstly, it depoliticizes
environmental governance where the government is deemed to ‘know best’ and as long as
people comply to these proposed policies, we are headed toward the right direction. Secondly,
and in the same vein, this promotes the idea of technocratic superiority where technocratic
solutions are regarded as the best option in addressing inherently political problems, due to
the academic work and evidence that support such policies.
To answer the first sub-question of this thesis, then: documents play an ideological role in
‘gaining’ public consent to produce and transform nature through the deployment of
socioecological fixes. They also have a material role wherein they legitimize policies due to
the authority they were given either by the institution from which they were issued or any
other related authoritative body.
88
6.2 Issues, transformed
I have demonstrated that the documents I have analyzed here have shaped and transformed
issues surrounding the forest fire problem, which addresses the second research sub-question.
From the analysis, I identify three issues that the documents helped solidify. Firstly, there is
the issue of emission targets that foregrounds most of the problem framing. As mentioned
previously, the NDC identifies emissions from LULUCF as the biggest contributor to
Indonesia’s GHG emissions and thus addressing it would be the fastest and most effective
way to meet the intended targets. Peat fires and deforestation from expansion of agricultural
plantations such as palm oil—though this is not admitted by the NDC—thus become a main
policy area in which intervention can be done. Concerns surrounding public health and
environmental protection become obscured with the mainstreaming of these emission targets,
and while logically the reduction of emissions will end up addressing these concerns,
environmental destruction and public health risks are both contemporary problems need
urgent addressing. With regard to peat fires, this is where the PRA and the SP come in as a
response to degraded and lost peatlands. This carbon sequestration project promised to restore
almost 2.5 million hectares of peat but little attention has been paid to disputed land,
particularly those claimed by indigenous groups.
This ties in to the second issue, which is indigenous involvement, or rather the lack thereof.
Indeed, it has been observed that while the ATHP, NDC, and the GD do mention the
engagement of indigenous people, it was not in any substantial capacity. No planned
partnerships with prominent groups such as AMAN were apparent. The SP, meanwhile, does
not seem to involve them at all. While in practice it might be different and perhaps there are
indeed some involvement, it does not bode well that the strengthening of indigenous
institutions is not part of such important official documents such as the NDC or the GD that
deals with sustainable forest and land stewardship and management, which indigenous
communities are known for.
Thirdly, and once again, the issue of technocratic superiority emerges and becomes
crystallized through the previous two issues. The managerialism inherent in this exacerbates
the depoliticization of climate change policies, meaning that voiceless and marginalized
groups such as the aforementioned indigenous people as well as peasants and the working
class will have to comply being ‘managed’ by the government. This is in order to achieve a
89
‘better’ future, a notion reflected in the analyzed documents but effectively sidelines any
alternative ideas or “imaginaries” (Swyngedouw, 2010) regarding ways to achieve such a
future. Moreover, the intended emissions reduction targets as stated in the NDC practically
necessitates the technocratic managerial approach toward forest fire mitigation due to its
‘efficiency’ and speed at which those targets can be reached.
6.3 Motivations and rationale behind issue formations
It is impossible to know the thought process and the ‘objective’ rationale behind the
production of the analyzed documents. The motivations expressed by the experts, however,
might provide some insights into as to the reasoning behind the policies the documents are
proposing. In answering the third research sub-question, four interconnected patterns emerge.
First of all, the author or group of authors that wrote the documents is suggested to act out
self-interest, influenced by the institution(s) in which they are embedded. This is reflected in
the text of the documents vis-à-vis the style in which the document is written, the intended
audience, and omissions of controversial topics. The most apparent example is seen in the
ATHP and SP, where the former foregrounds ASEAN’s philosophy of non-interference to
protect member states; and in the latter, where it omits any mention of engagements with
indigenous groups.
This is related to the second pattern which is the upholding of institutional reputation by the
documents through its proposed policies. For the SP and the GD, it was for the PRA and
NDPA’s reputation respectively; while the NDC and ATHP represents the GoI’s attempts at
enforcing a positive image of Indonesia. Acting out of self-interest thus serves to preserve the
reputation of relevant institutions. This means that mistakes or controversial aspects of the
institution will not be apparent or clear in the documents and matters of equity risk being
ignored, which is already evident seeing the marginalization of indigenous groups.
Self-interest is also a behavioral characteristic of underlying patronage networks that
influence these documents and the kinds of policies they propose. I have already discussed
this phenomenon in relation to the ATHP where Varkkey (2016a) how the strong patronage
culture among industry and government actors virtually determines Indonesia’s ratification of
the ATHP. I argue that it would not be a stretch that the same applies to the other documents
but to varying degrees. As I showed earlier, the omission of any meaningful involvement of
90
the palm oil industry across all the documents indicate that strong vested interests wish to
keep the industry dissociated from the problem framing of forest fires. While external
observers see this as controversial, the ‘internal’ logic utilizes the “divergent expertise”
(Goldstein, 2016b) of domestic scientists whose affiliations can be traced to palm oil lobby
groups.
What this allows is the political economic protection of the palm oil industry from
international scrutiny criticism. Considering the dominance of palm oil as a commodity in the
Indonesian economy and forms much of the national income, it goes without saying that
Indonesia will act out of self-interest, supported by existing patronage networks, to uphold a
reputation of being the top palm oil producer. It then becomes difficult for pro-environment
groups to effectively argue against the palm oil industry, despite the evidence they bring to
the table. The protection the industry enjoys, both from formal and informal institutions,
allows it to ignore such contestations based on, for example, equity and social justice because
the ‘divergent’ epistemic community can argue that oil palm has been able to boost economic
prosperity and works for poverty eradication (Pye, 2019; Susanti & Maryudi, 2016).
6.4 Intellectual labor in the production of nature
So far, I have discussed the role expert documents play in producing nature, the issues that
documents shape and transform, and the rationale for their writing. Echoing Ekers and Loftus
(2013), there is a need to investigate other forms of concrete labor in order to avoid the notion
a “disembodied laborer” and recognize the particulars of social reality. Thus, some abstraction
from previous discussions is called for.
In this thesis, I explored how intellectual labor produce nature within the geography of
Indonesian forest fires and transboundary haze. This production of nature takes on the form of
the socioecological fix (Ekers & Prudham, 2017, 2018), characterized by the deployment of
fixed capital (e.g. restored peatland) in order to avoid or temporally displace socioecological
crises (i.e. forest fires). Here, the intellectual laborer is the expert of policy and decision-
making, whose acts of producing nature is mediated by official documents that they produce.
Moreover, this mediation takes place within larger institutional arrangements, both formal, in
the sense of state government and extra-state bodies; as well as informal in the form of
91
patronage networks that are hidden from public sight, but whose influence can be seen to the
same effect.
The production of nature as argued by Smith (2008), and in extension the socioecological fix,
is a metabolic process in which human’s labor produce nature but in turn that produced nature
reproduce the human. In terms of the socioecological fix, the ideological implications are that
fixed capital carry with them certain hegemonic properties that metabolically influence
humans both locally and extralocally. In the context of this thesis, the produced forest nature
that includes the underscoring emission targets, excluding indigenous groups, and prioritizing
technocracy consequently reproduce a society that is more accepting of these forces. Put more
broadly, the logic of capitalism is reproduced within the social relations of the new forest
socionature. Therefore, the expert documents analyzed here, and the contextualized
intellectual labor, serve to alienate and externalize nature and further pronounce the nature-
society divide.
92
7 Conclusions
This research attempted to explore the relationship between intellectual labor and the
production of nature, mediated by expert documents within the context of forest fires and
transboundary haze that take place in Indonesia and the surrounding region. Using interviews
and practice-oriented document analysis, I analyzed official documents to investigate the
problem of forest fires not only through textual examination of the documents but also
analyzing the process of making them and the wider context in which these documents are
situated. The document that were analyzed were:
1) Peat Restoration Agency Strategic Plan 2016-2020;
2) Grand Design for the Prevention of Forest, Plantation, and Land Fires 2017-2019;
3) Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contribution; and
4) ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution.
Official documents, working within the state apparatus, produce nature through the
deployment of socioecological fixes such as restoring peatland. This restoration is regarded a
socioecological fix because it serves two purposes, which are to protect the environment from
future fires but also to offset carbon emissions that allows emission in other sectors. The
effect of this production of nature by documents has two effects: the depoliticization of
environmental governance and the foregrounding of technocratic superiority in engaging in
that governance.
The analyzed documents have also transformed the issue of forest fires into, firstly, the issue
of emission targets where any sociopolitical baggage of fire mitigation is abandoned in order
to achieve these targets. Secondly, this reiterates the issue of technocratic superiority of
such an approach to fire mitigation; it only makes sense that the ‘scientifically’ produced
emission targets are addressed by a set of ‘scientifically’ produced mitigation policies.
Thirdly, the lack of indigenous involvement becomes the logical outcome of the previous
two issues; since indigenous approaches to land management, for example small-scale slash-
and-burn, are considered unscientific and thus unethical. Involvement of indigenous
communities of forest fire mitigation is therefore seen as unnecessary.
The rationale expressed by experts and the documents suggest that there are four
interconnected patterns identifiable as motivations. First of all, self-interest is a major factor
93
that influence the kind of text that is being written. Naturally, the institutions that author the
documents would shape the document to serve its best interests, whether or not they intersect
with the general public’s. Secondly, the respective institutional reputation needs to be
upheld. This entails the omission of certain controversial aspects from the documents.
Thirdly, patronage networks as described in Varkkey (2016a) influence the documents both
out self-interest and in order to uphold the palm oil industry’s reputation. Finally, these three
patterns require the political economic protection of certain institutions and objects. The
lack of effective criticism of the palm oil industry and their involvement in forest fire
mitigation in the documents shows as much.
The role of documents in producing nature is undoubtedly instrumental, as I have argued here.
It is therefore imperative to scrutinize and repoliticize the document-making process and
weaken its techno-managerial tendencies of emission-reduction obsessions. The struggle for
more equity- and rights-based approaches to forest fire mitigation, indeed environmental
protection in general, require this repoliticization so that marginalized groups such as
indigenous communities have access to the political arena. This is not to say it is not difficult,
considering the influence of patronage networks; but documents can serve as an effective area
for intervention due to its openness to accountability measures. What has been written down
as law can be contested using another law.
Further research can be done on this subject through different areas. An exploration of
different intellectual labor regimes surrounding forest fires or climate change is a useful
avenue of research that expands the expert-focused approach used in this thesis. This allows
for a more variegated conception of the intellectual laborer in the Anthropocene. Additionally,
due to its relative novelty, a historical materialist analysis on different socioecological fixes in
Indonesia and the Global South would also be of importance in exploring diverse formations
of fixes during global environmental change. Overall, improving the production of nature
thesis through exploring different conceptions of labor is an important endeavor; not because
it manages to overcome the nature-society dichotomy, but, I argue that the set of political
praxis this approach brings allows for understanding uneven power relations and the ways to
resolve them.
94
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